Camellia
by CeliaBlair24
Summary: The attack on Haven has failed. Having abandoned Hazel Rainart, Mercury and Emerald are thrust into the unknown with no one to trust and enemies on all sides. Picks up three weeks after "Mercury".
1. Verbena

Tsuki, as it turns out, is as small as its name had suggested it to be. There were houses, of course, but they were few and far between. Wooden, small- humble, if ever Mercury could chose a word to define them. No person walked the streets, and the dark of the night was cavernous in the way it ate at any and all light that found them.

Emerald trails quietly ahead of him.

She has her fingers clenched around the hem of her cloak, though the cloth trailed through the dirt regardless. Mercury figures it was more for her nerves, then, and he couldn't exactly blame her.

The cold seemed to hound after them, lapping at the fraying ends of their days-worn travel clothes in a seeming attempt to get them to settle, and the darkness was nearly as persistent. That was not to mention the already _very_ real problem of actual bounties emblazoned over their heads on every veritable news network that worked in this backwater. Twice now, Mercury and Emerald had had to beat a hasty retreat, barely avoiding the awaiting arms of the local 'police force', the torture-and-chain-em routine, and, of course, the nice little, barely-a-person-sized metal cubicle.

Torchwick had worked his ears on that one. Multiple times.

Emerald stills abruptly, and the outline of her fingers works its way across her cloak until it's pulling at the hood just barely covering her eyes.

"Hear that?"

She asks, pulling back to stand beside him. Mercury shakes his head.

"Well,"

Red eyes flicker to his for just a moment, deep and contemplative, a world away yet focused all the same. He felt a small tingle then, a light brush across his skin as her aura flared, her semblance pushing through reality, ready and awaiting the moment when it could stake its claim on all senses with Emerald's illusion.

"What's up?"

His voice is a whisper as he speaks, though Mercury knows Emerald had heard him. She nods once, the lime green of her hair just barely peeking through her shawl.

"They're quiet- I can hardly hear anything but…"

She pauses, her eyes searching through the open darkness of everything around them. When finally her eyes still, Mercury feels her aura flair, feels the unmistakable tingle of his skin as her semblance washes over him.

"Huntsman"

Is all she says, her lips barely moving as she resumes her tracks along the bridleway, slowly, cautiously- normal to all eyes but his. She has her hands surreptitiously brushing against the side of her hips, where Mercury knows her holster to be. Ready to fight then. Ready to kill.

Warned and weary, Mercury follows soon after her lead, three steps behind and never further, his eyes balefully scanning the open streets.

This was routine now, this task of seeing without being seen. Observing, running, hiding, fighting. They had nothing to lose and their whole lives ahead of them. They couldn't be idle. They couldn't be indolent. They couldn't be doleful, buoyant or anything in-between. They couldn't _just rest_ and be done with it.

Those luxuries they threw out when they decided to leave Hazel. Those luxuries they threw out when they decided to attack Beacon, to attack _Haven._ Those luxuries they threw out the moment they decided to throw out their own morals, and ethics and basic compassion for a life with Cinder and her not-worries and not-problems and not-troubles-at-all.

Emerald makes a turn.

There is a little burrow of a house at the edge of town, just up ahead of them, and it's unlike everything else the town has had to offer so far. It is a shack of a thing, roughly built with slabs of wood and rusty metal around and over the mounds of rock jutting out from the nearest hills. Painted green and run over by thick vines and shrubberies, Mercury would have sworn it'd been pulled right from the pages of his old childhood fairytales had it not been for the fact that he was staring right at it.

"Here?"

He asks, adjusting the straps of his travel-bag as he lets his gaze graze over the ramshackle thing. Emerald smiles a blight little smile at that, matching the house part for part. There's something sad attached to the dark flickers of her eyes, something that pulled at Mercury's heart though he didn't want to have anything to do with it at all. He thoroughly ignores the feeling, the pooling of his guts around his feet as he comes to a stop just beside her, letting only the entrails of his curiosity show.

"It's abandoned, if that's what you're asking. I- I used to come here, before, you know. I used to come here every so often, usually just to hide o-or relax. It's safe enough,"

Emerald pauses, her hand twitching after the fabric of her cloak.

"I-It should be, at least"

She finishes, sighing off the last of the words in a near indecipherable heap. Before Mercury could question her, however, she gently brushes the tips of her fingers against his bared arm, quieting him effectively before he could so much as start.

"He watches, that huntsman,"

Emerald says, her head bowed. To this, Mercury gives her a nod, watching silently as she fiddles with the rusty metal chain clinging to the equally-rusty metal lock. It opens with some effort, and, with little coaxing on her part (Surprisingly enough), Mercury follows her inside.

Just as he is about to close the door, however, Mercury swears he'd seen a shadow leap through the crevices of the night, the silhouette momentarily visible against the backdrop of the shattered moon.

It could just be his imagination running, though. It was late out, after all.

The door closes with a simpering creak.

* * *

"Dusty thing!"

There's a cot, somehow, situated at the far back of the room. It's a small thing, fit for perhaps just Emerald or himself. Currently, Emerald was trying to dust it off, because she'd staked her claim on it some three years ago and Mercury could not, even if he tried, argue his way out of sleeping on the stone floor beside her. Not that he would, anyways.

Emerald continues her muttering, and from behind her, Mercury could almost make out the words. He's heard an _'Oum', 'Ass'_ and _'Fucking hell!'_ so far, so he could at least guess where her thought process was currently headed.

"Done! _God!_ "

Gracelessly, Emerald lets herself fall onto the thing, her fingers rubbing against the sheet-less bed and her feet dangling off the edge. Mercury gives her an elfin grin to that, not at all startled when she rolls her eyes.

"So, how long d'ya think we can stake out here- you know, with things the way that are?"

Emerald mulls over his question for a while, tracing her fingers listlessly over the patterns sewn into the cot. Her eyes are… elsewhere. Unseeing as she stares up into the molding edges of the rooms wooden ceiling. Not for the first time, Mercury wonders what it is she sees, what she hears, what she feels. She tended to do this, often. Zone out. Always with the same far-away look in her eyes. The same ditzy little frown.

"A day?"

But her answer is more a question than anything else, and Mercury can already feel his own lips being pulled at their edges. Her voice then is unsteady, unfocused, nearly unheard, and Mercury finds himself having to strain his ears to at least grasp everything else she tries to say.

"-I don't know, I don't know, I don't know-"

And then she stops almost entirely. Her eyes glassy, wet around the edges as tears mark their path down her cheeks.

"…Emerald?'

She turns to him abruptly, eyes wide, still unfocused, still blind to everything. And Mercury realizes that maybe he'd said all the wrong words again, that maybe he shouldn't have said anything at all because she's sobbing now. Keening and wailing and deafening him with the force of her sorrow.

"I don't know!"

She pushes the words through clenched teeth, red eyes blazing, her fingers bunching the fabric of her cloak.

Mercury hears then, a groan. Bellowing through the air, through the ramshackle ceiling and walls and the somehow-barred windows. Thunder.

His eyes widen.

"Emerald!"

She stops, quiet, suddenly. Her gaze refocuses, consciousness slipping through the eddying wisps of her despair-ridden haze. When finally she comes to, the thunder has long since stopped rolling, and the room is still, and dark.

 _Empty._

There is a pain, somewhere- somewhere up her arm. When she looks down, she sees it, red the size of a palm along the edge of her elbow, and purple indents that stretched around her arm, long and thin and familiar.

She doesn't think much on it, she already knows.

Mercury is not in the house with her.

* * *

Once upon a time, things were easy, relatively speaking.

People feared them, and they made people fear. They rode the tidal waves of chaos and anarchy, the insurgence that mapped its way through Remnant with every new, horrible year. It was belligerent, kind-of an awful thing to do. But it was safe and simple and Mercury liked the idea of at least those two things.

Cinder was kind enough, she was scary when she wanted to be, but she cared for them, looked out for them. She protected her own. That, more than anything, had drawn Mercury to her.

Emerald, Mercury wasn't exactly sure how she'd won over Cinder's affections, at first. The girl had been always-guilty, always-compassionate, always-merciful for longer than Mercury had relearned how to walk. In this business, at least, from what he'd seen at that point, those types of traits landed one in the gutter.

But Cinder liked Emerald, and, even Mercury had to admit, Emerald was _powerful_. She, regardless of her conscience, was more an asset than a liability. That, more than anything else, was why Mercury never outright complained about being partnered with the illusionist. At least, at the beginning.

The simple step-by-step plan of to-make-fear and being feared continued on for several simple, easy, relaxing months. It was fine work, the punishments (on others) where facile if not gruesome, and the reward was always worth the price.

But then, almost out of the blue, elementary became graduate school and Mercury's whole world turned on its axis.

Easy became rigorous, simple became a mountain climb. His house of cards came tumbling down and he was barely left standing amongst the ashes, the blood; the remains of his life's greatest travesty.

 _Beacon._

An accurate name, really. A _beacon_ of hope, a _beacon_ of fear. A _beacon_ of pain and heartbreak and a train-wreck of other things.

Cinder was down. Emerald was somewhere. Mercury was left to pick up the pieces.

It was hard work, looking after a master who _could not_ speak, and a partner who _would not._ Mercury had never been particularly patient (he was skillful in _other_ things) and the situation had frayed at his nerves and his very being. He held strong, though, and it seemed to have worked out at least. Emerald had started speaking again and Cinder didn't hide from him at every turn. Everything had started building back up again.

Until they didn't. They stopped. And then Mercury realized that even when all that was said and done, he still had to make sure the pieces stuck.

Everything then, from before, seemed so superficial- so stupidly superficial. It was easy to him then, to go through it all and reap the benefits, the prizes, the rewards without care of everything that would be taken from him in turn. And now he realized how much he perhaps needed the pieces of his heart and his mind and his conscience he'd left scattered in the wind _somewhere_ and he couldn't even find them, couldn't even find them and get them back. Not to use, not to borrow, not even if it was to _help._

And for months and months and months, Mercury could only taste the bitterness of uselessness.

Then, like his worst nightmare come to bite them in the ass, came Haven.

And then Cinder was dead, Emerald was broken, and poor Mercury had to make sure he didn't tumble as well.

" _Hah!_ "

The laugh felt spurious, even to him. Like tasteless, odorless, undetectable poison mingling with his tea. He'd have stopped, he _would have,_ but his chest strained and his lungs burned and he didn't know any other way to release the pain.

So he continued. He laughed and he laughed and he _laughed_ until it was his eyes that burned instead of his lungs and his throat that strained, constricting around the sob that he knew would be relentless if he so much as let it out.

What a joke.

 _What_ _a **joke.**_

Almost, he could hear it, the voices and words and phrases that made up his past. Almost he could see it, his shell, his mask melted, his house of cards tumbling to the ground. And almost, _almost,_ he could taste it. Dirt and blood and ashes, the bitterness of his whole world crumbling, and himself, unable to do anything but hear. Unable to do anything but watch. Unable to do anything but _feel._

Once upon a time, life was easy. And then it was not.

Mercury wondered if he could have saved it.

 _'Maybe'_

* * *

"We're not staying, aren't we?"

Looking up, Mercury sees Emerald standing before him. Blazing red eyes, thinned lips, a little furrow in her brow. She looked almost normal.

"Hm, that stalker guy's got three other eyes on every side he can't see for himself. "

"So we aren't staying?"

Mercury smiles.

"He's good,"

Emerald is close to blowing, he knows. Her expression is pinched, almost _pained,_ and that little furrow of her brows has developed more wrinkles since he'd last seen it. Mercury relents.

"Pack your bags, grab some stuff from the place if it's useful. I'll take care of the rest,"

He meets her by the eyes, only just, and gives her something of a wink.

"We leave in fifteen,"

Then he's off the roof, aura sizzling, legs loose and adrenaline straining against its bounds. Emerald shouts, words barely heard against the rushing of the wind.

"Show off!"


	2. Rhododendron

**This chapter takes place a week before chapter one. If you're wondering as to why, well, I won't answer that for ya. You'll find out soon enough, though, in the coming chapters. And _yes,_ in case you're asking, this will happen often in this fanfic. Ya know, for the fun of it! Heh.**

 **Oh, and a fair warning to my dearest readers: Mercury swears A LOT in this chapter.**

* * *

The forest is _noisy._

Mercury doesn't think he'd ever even considered that before. Branches snap and fallen leaves crumble under trudging feet, the trees rustle from some unseen wind and there's the sound of rushing water coming from _somewhere._ Owls hoot and birds sing and the ever present hum of the cicadas is almost a roar during the little moments of _actual_ silence.

Mercury doesn't know why he'd ever considered forests to be quiet. Why he'd believed all the movies and travelling shows Emerald had been obsessed with once upon a time. Forests were like concerts without people. Cooler, fresher, _lonelier,_ certainly, but not quieter.

And with a pang, sudden, and so horribly unavoidable, Mercury feels himself missing half-formed, barely standing shelters and mini-camps. The green colored lamps and the still burning embers of just-burnt-out flames.

Things felt so different now, without _her_.

Emerald is just up ahead, sidling through the looming sequoias and its over-stretched roots with an ease Mercury could only envy. She's energetic today, _somehow._ There's a bounce to her step and the whisper of words that pass her lips stretch into an almost-song that the birds and butterflies and bees all seem to sing along to.

 _Ugh._

Perhaps Mercury was just especially gloomy today. _Perhaps._ It wouldn't be the first time and Mercury could give less of a rats' ass if anyone were to raise their voices in protest- especially Emerald. But it annoyed him no less, and dammit if he could already feel little pinpricks itching up and across his bared arms in what he had always, _always_ known to be the start of his _especially_ volatile form of irritation.

"Damn,"

He ends up saying, because his inside voice is shot to hell thanks to the prickling irritation. Emerald perks up, ears raised as if she were some cat faunus who'd gotten a whiff of fresh tuna being hauled through the city docks in time for the City's _Especially Early Morning Market_ (Mercury still had no idea why Cinder had made them chase after Adam's faunus bitch for the day. Wasn't that a job for his little faction of the white dung?).

"Merc?"

She asks, all wide red eyes and slightly-pouting lips and that little furrow in the green of her brows. Mercury gives her a baleful stare.

"Bumped my foot into something,"

And she nods, because _that's completely unquestionable,_ and continues walking on as if sarcasm didn't sprout from her ass whenever it suited her fancy.

And then the world had gone back to the supposed-to-be quiet of hooting owls and wailing birds and the fuck-all cicadas.

And Mercury was still irritated.

 _Damn._

* * *

But of course, the irritation never lasts.

It's not six hours later, the sun is low and Mercury had only just gotten the campfire started. Emerald sits some five steps away from him, thin fingers tracing the glass lamp Cinder had given her some trillion years ago.

Mercury was making dinner, as usual; Emerald simply didn't have the attention span for such things anymore. The broth is not sludge, at least, and that's about the best anyone could get out of him regardless of whether or not they had a gun pointed at him.

Emerald just stops suddenly, while he's in the middle of not-over spicing the not-sludge. There's a glassy, faraway look in her red eyes, and her lips titter between a not-smile and a seconds-away-from-crying pull downwards. It's an expression that Mercury had long familiarized himself with, though the way it pulled at his heart hurt no less.

They had so much on their plates already. _So much._ This, on top of everything else- he couldn't deal with it. He couldn't, he shouldn't have to. He shouldn't.

"Em?"

He asks, the last visages of his whatever-the-hell mood from earlier ebbing away into a stream of worry and regret and something he still can't quite find it in himself to call despair.

She does not look at him, neither does she respond. Really, it's like she hadn't even heard him.

 _No, not at all._

And even if it'd happened before, even if this was an everyday, always bound to happen, regular thing for her to do… Mercury could feel his heart plummeting, racing, _rushing_. Slow yet fast, beating against his chest without beating at all. He wonders if the pounding he hears is all in his head and not some clock ticking somewhere, counting down the seconds until he has to get up and say something to snap her back out of it.

This funk.

Because that's what it is and nothing else. It's not, _not_ permanent, not some fixture he can't fix. Because it can be fixed, there's no doubt about that. It can and it will and Emerald just needed a bit more time. Just a bit.

"Em?"

He tries again.

And through the sounds of hooting owls and chirping birds and the crackling of the fire, through the mumble of leaves swinging to the charms of the forest winds and the damn fucking cicadas, Mercury remembered why the forest had always been considered quiet.

* * *

"Hey, wake up"

It's dark.

Fuck all it's still dark.

"Hey, Merc-y, wake up"

Emeralds voice is a burble, dithering and slurred and not-quite there, though Mercury is pretty sure that's more on him then the thieves own inability to enunciate. The world slowly begins to show itself, all blurred shapes and colors- recognizable though they were.

"What?"

That comes out a little funky too, so he knows he's on the right track of mind, at least.

After a few more seconds of blinking and rolling around on some backache-bed, Mercury finally feels sure enough he won't fall off the face of the earth the moment he sits up, and allows for Emerald to haul him off his ass.

Big mistake.

The world twist and twirls on its axis and Mercury would have fallen had Emerald not been kind enough to steady him, arm wrapped tight over his shoulder with a strength he really shouldn't have doubted she possessed.

Damn.

"What the hell?"

He asks, worn and weary and confused and _what the hell is happening?_

Emerald at least has enough heart in her _not_ to laugh. She smiles still though, the quirk of her lips a bit _too_ visible, small though it was.

Mercury was never going to live this one down.

"Care to fill me in, or do I have to guess? I'll-"

"Merc,"

"-have you know, I can't exactly think, the world is spinning-"

"Merc."

"- and _what the actual f-"_

"Mercury!"

He stops short, words stuttering, jumbling into a mishmash of supposed-to-be expletives and supposed-to-be arguments and confusion and a rant that was just halfway through and-

"Merc, look at me."

Emerald says, words sedated, _serious,_ despite the expression she wears on her face as if this were definitely something completely and utterly _hilarious._

"Fuck, what?"

Emeralds lips do that little pucker-thing. The one where they thin and her brows bunch together until they're basically an off-count cosplay of little red riding hoods old as dirt grandma. Or anyones grandma, really. Yeah.

Fuck, _his head._

"You're not listening"

Emerald murmurs, balancing himself and his useless legs (heh) against her boney ass shoulder.

 _How the hell is she so strong?_

With a dull, dirt-crusted (she needs to wash those) finger, Emerald guides his chin (also useless, the lolling thing) until they're both staring eye to eye, noses practically touching.

"Mercury, _Mercury_ , focus."

But that's hard. The world continues to spin, and his limbs continue to fail him like he's some sick thing and he just really doesn't want to even think about _that._

"Mercury,"

She whispers, guiding them somewhere- though, not quite. His useless metal legs drag through the dirt(?) and he's probably a deadweight to her and she just continues dragging him to where ever anyways and then his sitting and its hard but not and _what's happening?_

"E-Em?"

And she's right there, fingers threading through his hair, her lips ghosting chaste not-kisses over his forehead because he's sweating and shaking but his limbs aren't moving and there's pain somewhere, _everywhere_ and he can't breathe and can't think and can't, _can't,_ ** _can't._**

"Mercury, it's okay"

She tells him, lies to him.

Lies.

That's not fair. She doesn't lie, Emerald _does not_ lie. Cinder lies, with her blood red lips and sly, too-knowing, too-cunning amber eyes because that's what she does, that's just how she _is._ But Emerald is too-kind, too-merciful, too-doubtful to do _that._ Emerald does not lie. She does not _lie._

"It's okay,"

She says, over and over and over. Though the world keeps spinning, and the pain is still blinding, the words somehow manage slither through the cracks between here and now and _why._ Holding him together, strand by strand, not fast enough and far too slow but somehow managing and making and….

And he can breathe again.

And he can think and see and move and _feel._

And he sees her there, hovering over him with blown red eyes, seeing because there is something- _someone_ to be seen. She wears no smile and amusement seems to be as gone to her as it is to him. But she gazes at him and there's a softness there that he'd never really seen before.

"You're okay,"

She says, unquestioning, not doubtful in the least. Because he is. To her he is and Mercury is more thankful than he could ever say that she would believe that of him. _Him._

"What happened?"

He asks, words a harsh breath away from a whisper. He sounds like he'd been crying? Had he? He barely recalls. He- did he?

Emerald smiles, not unkind. Unassuming, unbiased, just _knowing._

Just Emerald.

"Later,"

She whispers back, her voice as near to tears as she'd ever willfully let him hear. And then he registers her fingers, thin and slow and not unpleasant, threading through his hair still. Pulling at knots, and not-knots and soothing somehow because of it. Scratching and rubbing and smoothing and he feels his eyes drooping long before she tells him to rest it off.

"Em?"

He asks, and she's still there. A palm- _her_ palm- resting atop his cheek, fingers tracing little lines into the creases behind his eyes, across his forehead, behind his ear. Soothing. Still so soothing.

"Later."

She tells him, something of _finality_ dripping from her every syllable, her very being. And he would be bothered, he _should,_ but she was kind and sweet and she hadn't lied after all and Mercury was feeling tired.

Tired.

He could rest. He could use the rest. He need only rest for a while, too. Just a while.

"Okay,"

Mercury tells her, and it's the last thing he remembers saying before he's pulled under the cover of darkness and _rest_ and _soothing._

 _Okay._

* * *

"We were attacked,"

There's a campfire burning in the middle of fuck-nowhere, red and orange and blazing and he hadn't made it. No, for the first time in almost a year, not at all.

Emerald sits on a pile of rocks she'd gotten from somewhere, smooth and not-dirty (so probably a river), manning the fire with a stick longer than her arm and just as wide. The fire crackles, the wood chirps as it cracks into several different pieces, and Emerald remains as steady as she'd always been.

 _Huh._

"It was around midnight, you'd fallen off to sleep"

She goes on, disregarding the fact that he was supposed to have been keeping watch, supposed to have been awake, been not-asleep, been watching and protecting and doing his job. What?

"-three of them. Scouts, I'd guess,"

"Wait,"

He intercepts, and she does. Frowning (Mercury doesn't think she'll commit to not-frowning anytime soon), all worried eyes and furrowed brows and her teeth working their way through the skin of her lips.

"Run that by me again"

She's not irritated, not like how he'd have imagined she'd be. Instead, she repeats everything she'd said. Word for word, he'd know, her red eyes glinting as they'd done all those times, those countless hours and endless days she'd worked with a still-healing Cinder. Patience is as much a kin to her as survival and mischief and thievery. _Apparently_.

"They came from the forest, three of them. They looked like they were just scouting, though they were armed as well. I'd woken up from the noise and you were just about to as well but…"

She pauses, her frown deepening, and Mercury could already guess out the rest of her sentence from that alone.

"They got to me, didn't they?"

Emerald nods, an almost-soundless sigh slipping past her lips. Mercury hears it, though, and he feels a tension gathering around and over his shoulders, straightening them into an almost-ramrod rigidity.

"An immobilizing dart, none of the really horrible crap"

With an incline of his head, Emerald goes on with her tale, short though it was.

"They were easy to dispatch. Like I said, scouting party. After that, well, I tried to move you at least a little bit away from camp before the rest of them realize anything is up and you know,"

Emerald gestures with both hands, trying to make sense of everything she couldn't articulate with mere words. Mercury nods.

"I know,"

There's a flash of a small, supposed-to-be smile, and then Emerald is hammering on, blunt, though not cold. Not the frost edged, bitter things Cinder liked to spout on about, if anything.

"You started waking up about a mile out from where we were. I sat you down against one of the trees and then, well, you remember the rest"

There's that smile now, longer than the last. But it's bitter, a bit guilty, a bit pained. An angry thing.

"How did we get here, though? Where are we even?"

To this, Emerald's smile turns a little bit more real, a little bit more familiar. It's small, a quirky little thing that was simply just shaped funny. Crinkled, he thinks the word is.

"We're about four miles off from where we were when you woke up. I carried you"

She tells him. Fast. Simple. To the point.

Mercury feels his eyes widen, even as his cheeks blare a baleful red.

"Oum, how the hell did you do it?"

Emerald grins, and any bitterness or embarrassment or whatever he'd thought he'd caught whizzing off of her is replaced by pure, unabashed, rage-churning, embarrassingly embarrassing glee.

"I got hands and legs and a working back-"

Mercury groans. He swears, he swears to _Oum,_ she's giggling at him.

Gods.

"Oh c'mon Merc, it's not _that_ unbelievable"

"Shut up!"

He snaps. He really, _really_ should have known. Emerald doesn't give a shit.

She laughs louder.

" _Ugh!"_

And louder.

 _Goddammit._

And through the embarrassment and irritation and whatever the hell else, Mercury almost doesn't notice his shoulders drooping, _loosening._

He'd almost forgotten. He'd really almost forgotten.

It felt nice, knowing he had someone at his back, despite it all.

* * *

When they're next attacked, well, Mercury and Emerald had both expected it.

Really, it was common sense, plain and simple. Men loose men, men go after men, men find men dead, men go after fuckers who killed men.

Simple.

Or it should have been.

What they'd both forgotten to take into account- fatigue muddles those aspects of common sense, apparently- was the fact that Emerald had been attacked by scouts and maybe, just _maybe,_ the shits that sent them were more skilled. And numerous.

 _Fuck._

There were eleven of them. _Eleven._

Now, normally this wouldn't be a problem, the two of them had faced worse odds. Thing was, the eleven of them were, well, decent. Decent fighters- not on their level- but _fuck_ if they weren't a little more than a mere annoyance.

A minute into a brawl and no one is dead, they're all armed and angry and goddammit, Mercury was not excited _in the least._

Three minutes into the brawl- because it's not a fight, it's _not_ \- and one of the older huntsman dropout is dead and three more of them are injured and Emerald's sickles gleam a nasty red under the dull light of the early morning sun.

Five minutes into the brawl, Mercury makes his first kill. A snapped neck sends a fourth member onto the pile of dead nobodies slumped across the forest clearing.

Seven minutes into the brawl, there are only four members not dead, though they were all quickly bleeding out. For the first time since they'd initially been attacked, Mercury speaks out.

"Who are you?"

No one answers, though they all have working mouths. Emerald, who had been standing just beside him, starts running towards the remainder of them, sickles bared, red dripping across the forest floor from both her blades and the fingers she has wrapped around them.

Eight minutes into the brawl and only one of the eleven is left standing. His left hand is bent at an awkward, probably incredibly painful angle and Mercury finds it hard to not sympathize. The boy wheezes.

Emerald pauses, her weapons still bared, still that same glinting, dangerous red.

She must realize it too.

"P-Please, let m-me go"

He couldn't have been that much older than themselves. Cropped hair, salt and pepper stained red. Bloodied not-armor, and no weapon to be seen.

"Who are you?"

Emerald asks this time around, red eyes hard as the gem she'd been named after. Almost malicious, glittering and glimmering under the sunlight. The boy must be petrified.

"M-Micael Kao-Kaolinite"

There's a swish, the sharp flick of thin metal and rushing air and suddenly the edge of Emerald's blade is pressed dangerously close to the boy's jugular.

"Why are you in the forest?"

She asks. _Orders._ And like ice melted, the words tumble from the boy's lips in barely understandable gibberish melded into what they actually wanted to know.

"Bounty?"

Mercury swallows hard, throat at once all too dry and not dry at all. With a single step, he was standing beside Emerald. One boot forward, his back bent in a way that allowed him to be face to face with the kneeling supposed 'huntsman in training'.

"Y-Yes. A million lien, s-straight from At-Atlas"

Mercury nods, straightening back up. Emerald makes to move forward, to finish him off like they'd been taught.

But the boy gets this look in his eyes, something between panic and resignation and Mercury finds himself reaching out for Emeralds' arm before she could land the killing blow.

" _What?"_

She hisses, and Mercury can see it in her eyes as well. The hesitance. The _resignation._

"He could be of more use,"

Mercury tells her, words not quite a whisper, just loud enough for the boy to hear.

"What?"

And the word is not quite a hiss. Not quite anger or irritation or any mixture of the two.

"He can be our messenger"

Micael nods. Quickly, near-ceaselessly. Mercury ignores him, his eyes for Emerald and Emerald alone.

"Em,"

 _We're not merciless killers, not quite. We're not Cinder. We don't have to do this. We_ ** _can't_** _do this._

"Good idea."

She says the words. Hard, biting.

 _Relieved._

"Go, before we change our minds."

The boy is gone without a second thought. Running and jumping and _rushing_ through the forest enclosure in a hasty attempt to get away from them. Briefly, Mercury entertains the idea of simply shooting him. Killing him off, cutting all loose ends.

He was, after all, as bathed in blood as Emerald herself. What difference would it make, one more person who probably didn't deserve to die?

But the idea flitters away as the moment drags on, gathering with it the wisps of _what ifs_ and _should haves_ because they really didn't want to do that anymore.

Knee deep in innocent blood and lives that could have been spared, if Mercury were to turn over a new leaf (Cinder was dead, his father was dead, he would be dead too, soon. What difference did it make?), well, he might as well start with this.

Beside him, Emerald lets out a breath.

"Let's hope this doesn't bite us in the ass."

"Famous last words"

Mercury cackles. With a bloodied, weapon-less hand, Emerald swats at him.

"Oh, shut up"

He knows she agrees with him.

He'd always known.


	3. Tansy

**Warning: The first scene focuses on some pretty disturbing stuff. There'll be violence, some gore and if you're not a fan of those, you can skip the entire first scene entirely without too much trouble. :)**

* * *

 _Death, Mercury thinks, had never been as palpable as it was then._

 _Red floods the streets in streams, trickling through cracks in the cobblestone road._ Blood _, he thinks distantly, gushing still, flowing endlessly from bodies strewn carelessly across the boulevard._

 _A scream pierces through the air, high pitched- the scream of a little girl. Terrified, he knows, of what was to come her way._

 _The swish of flattened blades sounds distinctly like a death penalty, the cries of that little girl halting with a gurgled squelch._

 _"There, all better"_

 _Her tone is light, the words falling sweetly from full, dark-tinted lips. In that moment, the red on her blades matched the red of her dress, the wells of crimson now utterly devouring the brightness of her amber orbs._

 _"Mercury,"_

 _It's as much a warning as it is a call. Her hand, petite, small, stained with the blood of so many innocents, reaching out to capture his own._

 _He allows her._

 _"Hmm, this way. Emerald should not be far,"_

 _Cinder glides through the bodies with practiced ease, serpentine eyes crinkled back with hidden amusement. Her smile never leaves her lips, sharp as the swords she clutches in one hand, bright as the moonlight that slithers through the desolation heedlessly._

 _Calm. Collected. Heavily amused._

 _Mercury swallows the bile surging through his throat, swallows too the blood from where he'd bitten through the insides of his cheek. Unsteady on metal legs, he steps on small, splayed hands. The hand creaks, snaps when he scampers off too quickly. When he looks down, gray eyes wild and far too bright, he sees the sharpness of a bone piercing through the skin of a little wrist, a waterfall of red framing the now shapeless hand._

 _Twistedly curious, and far from his own mind and sanity, he follows the trail of ashen white skin, the stained blue of a little tunic, and allows his eyes to take in the sight of the far too little body._

 _Unseeing eyes stare unblinkingly at the sky, blue as the seas of Mistral and glazed by un-fallen tears. Even in death, fear holds the girl steady._

 _"Mercury."_

 _A reprimand, impatient, dry. Mercury turns, palms sweaty, clasping uselessly at the open air. Cinder stands far ahead of him now, arms folded across her chest. Emerald stood just beside her, silent, unapologetic._

 _"Are you coming?"_

 _Cinder asks, head tilted ever so slightly. Assessing him, he thinks, her golden eyes glinting dangerously under the light of the lone, flickering street lamp._

 _"Yeah,"_

 _He ambles ahead, the fine leather of his boots brushing against slack hands and knees and faces he dares not look down to see. Cinder waits, watching with an arched brow as he almost staggers through the flood of them. Bodies. Dead._ Dead _!_

 _"Let's go"_

 _She saunters on when finally he's within reach. No helping hand to comfort him, no lingering eyes that understood. Emerald follows quickly after, ever obedient, always respondent to her every call and action. And Mercury trudges after them both, wading through dirt and blood, and_ blood _, struggling to steady himself on unsteady feet, to focus his sight with unfocused eyes, to not feel the thundering of his own heartbeat._

 _The screams follow after him, all innocent, all lost to the absent wind of a night far too warm, far too peaceful, far too quiet to be real._

 _And Mercury ignores this._

* * *

Sleep does not come easy.

The night draws long, casting over the world a shadow, and darkness curls its way through the edge of Mercury's periphery, dangling the tantalizing chain of _rest_ and _calm_ and _escape_ like a particular treat he may never have.

It was alright, however, Mercury had survived far worse.

A sooty boot dawdles along the thin line that separates the lands of _here_ and _then_ , hanging low against the edge of the precipice, unguarded and unkept. A fine-boned arm rests lazily across a single propped leg, kneading into the flesh and not-flesh in an attempt to soothe away the nightmares crawling after him still.

Cinder and death and bones and blood.

He loved Cinder, of that he was doubly certain. Her charisma- the charm in which she so easily _exuded,_ her attentiveness, her strength of character; she was a borne idealism, the actualization of his every dream. She was whom he had one day hoped to be. Powerful, respected, self-confident, _feared._

And kind still, somehow.

But she'd scared him, she'd scared him as she'd scared everyone else. It was a fact, really, wherever golden orbs formed resentment, the tastes of flames and ashes and _destruction_ were never so far off. Her rage, vindictive and so very quick to ignite, fueled a times worth of Salem's plans simply by _being,_ after all.

Mercury, respect her, _love her_ though he may, was not so stupid as to ignore the obvious. As she was his borne idealism, also was she his borne fear, his borne nightmare.

She wove fire like a silken duvet, wrapped it over her shoulders like a velvet shawl. Her amber orbs poured liquid gold over the remains of her every fit, building from nothingness the everything of which they could possibly imagine to have for themselves. She was chaos, destruction and revitalization. She rose from the scattered mess of her everything and nothing at all, the foundations in which she herself used to become better, brighter, _the best._

Needed, _wanted_ , a step away from touch but always too far to reach.

She drank manipulation, savored lies and underhandedness. Her sexuality she used to twist men, bow them under her thumb and she regretted it not at all.

Mercury's ideal.

Mercury's nightmare turned real.

Cinder Fall.

Wind ghosts over his bared arms, the chill like scraping nails dragging over pale flesh. Mercury represses a shudder, curling in on himself as he looks out, gray eyes viewing the _beyond._ The foliage is a sea of green, iridescent of the Mistralian waves cresting along the shores of its white sand beaches. Rocks peak through the packed trees in slivers of gray, gleaming almost silver under the light of the shattered moon.

His eyes roam on, tracing along the jutting ends of the glimmering stones, stringing them, one to another with thought, long cafard boredom and imagination. A necklace is born then, through it, one of gemstones all a varying shade of silver-gray. Mercury's eyes crinkle at the thought, portraying for him the amusement his lips have given no effort to show themselves.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

Asks a familiar voice, slinking towards him from the furthest edge of his periphery. From the darkness she ploughs through, a towering bastion of all things reprimand-able. Mercury swallows the urge to retort.

"I made a necklace with rocks,"

He says truthfully, knowing full well that it was much less believable than any lie he could ever hope to sell. Emerald buys the front, at least, and dissolves into a mishmash of supressed-laughter and borderline scowls.

"It's my turn to take over shift, Merc"

She goes on, making her way towards him until the heel of her boot was pressing into the back of his thigh. She shows no sign that she notices, however, and if she does, she shows no sign that she minds.

"You sure?"

Mercury queries, words drooling a line of pleases and maybes and promises he meant to keep because sleep didn't come so easy and he was yet to be ready to leave.

Emerald doesn't concede, though Mercury well knew that she understood him fully. Instead, she slowly settles down beside him, back brushing against the grating edge of the rock face, painting her top a healthy black and brown.

"Tonight's beautiful,"

She whispers, tilting her head until it was settled along the slope of his neck, stringy green hair tickling his chin, the underside of his nose and ears. He doesn't say much else, watching as he had, the _beyond._ The sea of green that stretched on forever, the clustering slivers of rock that formed a necklace if you looked at it just _right._

"I know,"

Mercury whispers back, managing only just so to be heard over the sudden rush of the wind; the thunder rolling in the distance.

A finger, chafed, small and far too thin trails across the calloused dip of his palm. Drawing a cross, a letter, a word all its own, niggling and nudging until he had his fingers wrapped around it, holding it close to his own.

"Stay up with me?"

But it's not a question, and Mercury knows of this the moment the words slither pass her lips.

"Yeah"

Incandescent, bloody brilliant, but the stars they struggled to see. Under the light of the broken moon, above the washing sea of green and steel-gray, Mercury and Emerald set over the edge of the precipice, waiting for the quietness to lave away the memories of _what had been._

* * *

The pub is a congested affair, ratty though the thing was.

The place is rickety and old- a ramshackle thing. From outside, he'd already gotten a flash of a sign half-up and a door just barely held onto its hinges. Sitting by the bar, cheap beer warm against the healing cuts lining the bend of his palm, the place didn't exactly get any better.

Ne'er do wells lined the decrepit back walls of the pub, their numbers trickling into the throng of the usual drunkards, thieves and black-marketers that frequented the area. The local entertainers sidled into the VIP lounges (and against the bar stools and the old drunkard that came with it when they couldn't), seducing their way into a single night of work and a weeks' worth of rental pay.

"Awfully morose, for a boy your age"

An older man, buff and weatherworn, slumps against the stool beside him. He looked ridiculous, almost; massive arms tucked painfully against his chest in a truly fruitless effort to keep their bulk from bumping into anything. His head tucked, mussed though it already was, nearly to his chin to keep from bumping into the fatuously low edge of the bars upper cabinet- which served as a sort-of divider, if he'd have a guess at it.

"You don't look so good yourself,"

Says the boy, the dingy light bulb flickering along to the stuttering yodel of the old country song playing in the background. The man grunts, and it's almost a chuckle, though the boy wouldn't risk his life betting on it.

"What brings you here?"

The boy asks, a hand spread; waving over the scowling bartender who was headed here anyways.

"Nothing you'd be interested in."

The man's voice is brusque, as worn sounding as the rest of him. When he shifts in his seat, he droops precariously forward, the deep brown of his hair reaching in little tendrils for the chipped wood of the countertop.

A stretch.

"You look like shit,"

The boy slurred, after what seemed like eons. His glass was conspicuously half of the way empty, quickly catching up with its brothers, clear and faced down, the whole six of them.

He sways.

The man does not attempt to help him, choosing to scrutinize him instead with steely brown eyes.

Then he sways again, sharply this time, and the hem of his shirt sleeve slides up, revealing to all eyes that even bothered to see the mottled, bruising mess of it. The man frowns, taking the boys glass- still wrapped tightly around his palm- and placing it onto the counter. A large hand clamps over the boy's shoulder then, steadying him as he seemed to almost wilt under the full force of his inebriation.

"That's enough for you,"

The man breathes, slipping off his chair with a grace that did not match his towering physique. The boy turns to him, eyes large, a glassy blue, and he whimpers.

"What's your name? I'll take you home."

The man tells him slowly, almost gently. The supposed-to-be boom of his voice a hairs breadth from a whisper as he settles the boys arm over his own shoulder, hauling him onto his feet with little effort.

"Mi-Micael,"

The boy starts, words a stuttering, slurred mess.

"Micael K-Kaolinite"

The boy looks up at him, the man leading him slowly out of the ratty old thing they called a pub, and he's uncertain of what he sees.

"Where do you live, Micael?"

He asks, voice not so gruff now, not so forced.

 _"I don't know."_

* * *

"Morning,"

Micael wakes to somewhere unfamiliar, the dark blotch that was supposed to have been his memory ruling out all hope he'd have had at remembering _anything_. He blinks once, unwrapping himself from the thin blanket thrown over him.

"W-What?"

His head _pounds,_ his brain seeming to find favor in dancing out a rhythm against the inner-lining of his skull. For a moment, Micael found it incredibly easy to forget about the hulk of a man sitting by the corner of the old futon he'd woken up on, paying all his attention on the colors and the muted, mini-explosions ricocheting off the walls keeping his brain firmly inside his head.

"You drank a lot,"

The man says matter-of-factly, not sympathetic of his plight in the least.

Micael doesn't exactly blame him.

A little bug in the deepest corner of his mind niggles at him, squirming its way through his congealing brain-matter and nerve endings in an attempt to reach out for his attention. He pays it no mind, just as he pays the blank spot in his memory no mind. For now, the little things didn't matter. For now, all that did was this headache, the nausea threatening to take hold of his insides if he moved too much too soon, and… and the pain he couldn't feel burning up the side of his arm.

He'd broken a bone there.

Micael startles. _Hard_. His stomach rolls, his throat burns, and he turns quickly to his side, feeling sick as suddenly as he'd ever had. Then a bucket just appears there, somehow, out of _nowhere_. He doesn't think about it, though, the particulars. Instead he bends quickly over, both hands gripping the buckets rusting metal sides as he retched out the lot of his late night's escapade.

"Are you all right?"

The man thinks to ask, his voice oddly soft, almost placating in a way. Micael nods despite himself, fingers brushing against the fly away hairs clinging to the bile splattered across his chin. He grimaced.

"Wh- who are you, anyways? Where are we?"

The nausea fades into a dull pinch of discomfort, and soon, the boy is able to think more. His head still ached, the pinch a sharp not-stab piercing through the very fibers of his brain, but it wasn't as bad as it had been when he'd first woken up and… and he was acclimating.

His shifting eyes finally focused enough for him to take a good look at the place. It was a cottage, small, walls narrow and obviously thin. They were a stained brown, blotchy at their ends with the dried remains of mucky rainwater. The floor was wet and dirty, the blackness of the mud difficult to distinguish from the blackness of the rotting wooden floorboards. There was the occasional piece of furniture, but all were in such sorry states that Micael wasn't sure it was a fact worth noticing at all. Dilapidated, a long cry away from anything remotely close to live-able, and the boy was sure that where he was now was more a pilfered shelter than anything rented or permanently owned.

"A mile out from Sujeira,"

The man says, taking the bucket of bile and placing it at the furthest corner of the room, alongside a host of others. Micael watches him, blue eyes hard- confused though they were.

"You didn't answer my question,"

He states, a deep frown pulling at his lips. His hand tingled, and a numbness spread quickly through it. Not pain. Not the burning, impossible pain he had to endure for days before.

"Who are you?"

Micael asks again, a kind of worry seizing for itself the very chambers of his somehow beating heart.

"We met at the pub, you and I. You passed out, I-"

"No."

And he sounded almost-confident, too.

"I'm Micael, I… I grew up here. Mistral. Sujeria is my hometown."

His eyes narrowed, and internally, he praised himself, the not-quiver of his voice, a timbre lower than it conversationally would be.

"I do not recognize you"

The man stands from where he'd been crouched beside him, back straight and chest puffed impossibly out. Burly arms wrap a shield over himself and Micael barely manages to suppress the shudder wracking its way through the insides of him.

The man was huge.

 _Towering_.

"What do you wan-want?"

His voice cracks at last on the final word, the strain of his faux bravado withering back into the nothing it always had been. He ends in an almost-whisper, whimpering like a scuttling dog when the man stood up even _straighter,_ shoulders so far back, the swell of his chest an impenetrable wall of stone and iron and whatever materials made Atlas so impenetrable. His burly arms cast a shadow over the thinness of his face and Micael found himself wishing for not-death the moment hard brown eyes came boring into his.

"I'm looking for a boy, about your age"

The man steps forward.

"I think you may know him."

* * *

Morning comes with an almost sweet sort of tranquility.

Emerald sits by the rock-stack that was their cooking fire, muscling through a baskets worth of mushrooms for the soup she'd promised to make yesterday. She was quiet, as she'd always been recently, but for once, Mercury didn't feel any need to talk her out of it.

It was a calm sort of quiet. Her red eyes were focused, her small, dexterous hands impossibly quick. She cleaned, minced and levied them into the water boiling over the makeshift grill, following them up with some herbs she'd picked up three hours into their after-lunch trek yesterday.

The air was cool, thankfully. From this high up in the Mistralian forest, Mercury should have expected that. They were just a ways in from a cliffside, the forest trees not nearly so dense and spacey enough for a comfortable little camp in-between the foliage. A river flowed some two hundred feet below them, fed by a large cascading waterfall they'd yet to pass by (though they should, soon).

Mercury, free of cooking duty for the first time in nearly three weeks, was currently sifting his way through the multiple maps Cinder had been thoughtful enough to toss at them for keepsake months ago. Currently, they were edging towards the marge of Mistral's mountain ranges, following the river _Tsune._ The plan for now was to just continue on until they reached its tributary into the Mistralian Sea just a few miles from a town named Izumi. From there, well, it was a coin toss. The original plan was to make their way to Kuchinashi, but the place was too close to Mistral's city proper and neither he nor Emerald wanted to meet their eventual demise so early into the chase.

Mercury had suggested they head off to Vacuo. Emerald thought they were better left here.

They were at an impasse.

"What do you think?"

Mercury asks her later on, when she's sat decidedly beside him, broth in hand and curious as to their path for the day.

Emerald shrugs.

"We need a place to stake out, rest up for a while"

Mercury frowns, a finger worrying at the already abrading edges of their most recent map. Emerald, seeing his expression, perhaps, lets out a long suffering sigh.

"Give me that,"

She takes the map away before he could work his way through the parchment any further, her red eyes narrowed, obviously disgruntled by him and his wont. Mercury at least had enough self-preservation in him not to smirk.

"Let's see,"

Emerald murmurs, nibbling at her bottom lip as she traced her fingers over the browning sketch of their _glorious_ kingdoms.

 _"Huh"_

She looks surprised, the furrow of her brows raising until it was covered near fully by the mélange of her fringe.

"What is it?"

Mercury asks, scooting closer to her until he was practically pressed against her side, his head peeking out from over her shoulder in an attempt to catch a glimpse of whatever it was she saw.

"We're headed for Izumi, right?"

Emerald turns to look him in the eyes, diverting his attention from the splotchy paper to herself.

"Uh, yeah, sure"

Emerald grins, and it's an excited thing. Her teeth peak out from beneath the cover of her stretched lips, and the littlest dimple in her left cheek is very nearly visible. Mercury blinks.

"Wh-"

"Merc, I think I know a place"

She takes his arm briskly into her own, the closest thing to _excitement_ filling in for where once silence and nothingness reigned. There's this spark of recognition in her eyes, this spark of a long known familiarity.

For the first time since he'd met her, Mercury was dead sure it had absolutely no connections to Cinder.

Thin finger practically vibrating with her newfound enthusiasm, she places it over a name that was half faded, written over what he guessed was a little town far between the mountains and the sea.

 _Tsuki._

"It's along the way and, if we pick up pace now, we can reach there in three days tops."

Emerald tells him, and all he can do is nod along.

"Rest?"

Emeralds grin slips into something a lot less wide, a lot more familiar. _Intimate_.

"Yeah, rest."

Mercury agrees.

* * *

"A mercenary's son,"

The words tasted bitter on his lips. Flaking off with each syllable into a well of lingering resentment and absolute fear.

"He had a girl with him."

Oh, Micael remembered her. Red eyes, the color of the blood on her blades, and hands and _smile_.

"I don't know where they went,"

Micael tells the man regretfully, the bitterness not hidden well enough by the forced politeness of his words. The man, however, is understanding. He only asks for where they were.

Happily, he gives it to him.

"Hazel Rainart"

His name is his goodbye, the very last words he'd said before he'd turned and gone off all his own. Micael watches as his silhouette slowly disappeared into the darkness of the coming dusk, only slightly perturbed that he could so easily slip into the shadows, unseen and inconspicuous to all despite his size.

Really, all he felt now was relief.

He turned towards the ratty futon the man- Hazel had left with him. Old, dirty but useable. He'd make use of the gift for the coming weeks, of this he was certain.

The skin of his once damaged arm ached; the phantom pains had yet to be gone. Hazel said they would though, dust infusion only stuttered the logical processes for so long.

 _Well_.

When the pain had faded back into a mild tingle, Micael gathered up his things- small though they were- and headed out of the rickety _old_ cottage.

Wherever Hazel was headed off to, for whatever reason, he wished him the best of luck. And inside his heart of hearts, the one that was still beaten, still licking his wounds clean, he hoped the people who'd put him here would pay for what they did.

 _"Mercenary's son"_

Micael almost laughed. Almost.


	4. Zinnia

**Note: This chapter picks up directly after Verbena. So, in case anyone is confused... yeah. Ehehehe :'/**

* * *

 _The smell is pungent; the taste a familiar bitterness lining the tip of his tongue. It weighs thick and heavy, splattered across the fabric that was once his shirt._

" _Too slow."_

 _Cinder, and her burning eyes and burning smile is not at all impressed. There is blood. Everywhere he turns, there is blood. A sea of it all, a burbling, sludge of a mess._

" _Be better, next time"_

 _And her gaze sears most of all. More than her words, meant to cut deep and churn him raw. More than her hands wrapped tight around his own._

" _Mercury."_

"I'm just a scout. I swear, I'm only being pai-"

Mercy, they say, is a weakness. Impropriety in a world of liars and killers.

He takes out their strongest first and he lets them all see it, too. Then he, born of tainted blood and of tainted blood himself, slays them all, one after the other. Like he'd been taught. Like he'd allowed himself to learn.

And, to himself, he justifies it all.

This is as it should be.

This is what is.

 _Don't be weak._

"Please,"

Emotions are a weakness. Emotions lead to mercy and mercy is to the strong as a drug is to a foolish man.

Yet even still, Mercury hesitates.

"I can- I can be of use"

He isn't so young, the man looks to be reaching his forties. Thinning gray hair, weathered skin and thick wrinkles stretching far beyond his eyes.

He isn't so young. He had no more life ahead of him.

"Yeah, doubt it"

He kills him swiftly. Painlessly.

Quickly.

"Experienced, aren't ya?"

A shadow crosses the room, quiet as the night that stretched on ahead of him still. A familiar silhouette from the slippery mirage that was his memories.

"You'd know that, wouldn't you?"

A chuckle is his reply. A baritone that fingered the gravel dusting the stone floor beneath them both, as battered in that same bitter regret as his own.

"Yeah,"

A stillness takes hold of what was and would be. For a moment, Mercury was stuck in a time that wasn't time at all. The man stands not so far ahead of him, the tattered ends of his cape broadening into a carpet of red. Red as the blood beneath his feet, red as the rose he loved so dearly.

And Mercury wondered.

"Why are you here?"

His voice breaches through the stillness, a thin wraith- hot mist against the coldness of everything.

"We need to talk."

* * *

The trees reach for the stars, spindly branches like skeletal limbs breaking through the forestry for a single taste of heaven. The nighttime, Hazel remarks, only furthers the imagery.

The night is quiet, relatively speaking. No man walks alongside him on the beaten overgrowth that was once a well-known bridleway. Towns lay far apart, separated from each other by days of travel by foot or wagon; hundreds of lien for a scant few hours in the air. A shame, perhaps, but also a necessity.

Large clusters of people, after all, painted a titillating mark for the Goddess and her spawns.

There was a wind picking up not far from the horizon, prickling at the hairs that bent around his arm. It was years of experience that told him, years of his experience that he could ever have a guess.

There was a storm brewing.

Unnatural- far too fast to ever be.

Hazel, of course, knew what it meant.

"Hangsang. They were following the river Hangsang"

Man'nen, the largest body of water flowing through the east of Anima, also known as _Tsune_. Hangsang was a local name, not commonly known among the citizens of Mistrals city proper. It didn't take too long for Hazel to connect the pieces. He's almost grateful for him, that boy, because really- how visible.

How visible, he'd thought, and he'd been almost proud. Obvious to be unobvious, perpetually obscured by what Hazel and his every tracker had thought to call _"Common sense"_. No one would have ever expected this of them. For them to follow well known tracks, for them to be so utterly encounterable.

"Go on ahead of me,"

He'd sent ten of them. _Strays_. The huntsman Salem could have further use of. Expendable, _dispensable_. Lives they could throw away.

"Sir!"

There was a message. Just one simple word.

 _Tsuki._

Hazel trudged on.

* * *

He was late.

The hours ticked by and he was late, _late_ , _**late**._

The sky lightened, bleached of its stars with the lightest brush of the coming morning. _Sunlight_.

He was late.

The madness, it reaches out with fingers spread. Ready, _always_ ready. Simply waiting for her to land.

Time ticks by.

The sky brightens further.

He's _late_.

Minutes spread out. Minutes that were once seconds which were now reaching for _hours_. Hours and hours and hours, flickering by with the blank nothingness of bags packed, an abandoned cot and an empty cottage.

 _He's_ _late._

And she's falling into the blind wilderness of desperation and despair and _pain._ Pain that is a burden, familiar yet not at all. Pain that is a friend, comforting yet not at all. Pain that brings her misery, pulling the strands that made _her._ Rending her of her flesh and bones and blood until she's left a shell. Again and again and again.

The madness pulls.

Time ticks by.

The sky brightens still.

 ** _He's late_**.

The madness clings with a chronic need, unchallenged, and she's left to steady herself all her own. The sunlight slinks in through the windows, barred by rusting iron yet bare of glass to cover it whole. It's a brightness that dulls her vision, somehow. Pressing into the recesses of what was still struggling to function as properly as how it once had, how it was supposed to still be.

She stutters in her movements, her fingers flexed from where they lay resting against the boney top of her knees. She forgets so quickly sometimes, she'd been about to do something.

There is a flash. There is a brightness. There is a ring resounding through the air.

 _A call._

The madness pulls further, and her consciousness lies flat in a well of what she could only describe as nothingness.

Time had moved further still, apparently.

It was morning, now.

Birds sung, the diaphanous curtains failing to hide the sunlight slinking through the old cottage room, breaching through that which was once dark and taking from it what made it be.

 ** _A call._**

"Mercury"

And a little part of her chest loosens from the bind it's tied itself into.

Her heart relaxes; her shoulders droop.

Emerald picks up her scroll.

* * *

 **This chapter is the _SHORTEST_ in all Camellia. I know, I know, perhaps it's not what anyone was expecting but... well the plot's picking up and I need some fillers because those seem like a minimum requirement thing for good fics so. *Shrugs* Hope it's all well and good with you all, my dearest readers. And because I'm a tease who also loves all her dear readers, I'll reveal at least this lil tidbit. **

**Next chapter is a special one~~**

 **-Yorky**


	5. Anemone

It was a world vastly different from anything Emerald remembered.

And it starts with a woman.

A fire crackled, brighter than any other Emerald had seen before. Meat ( _a deer!_ ) left sizzling over the flames, a tender color, red and reddening. She'd never truly seen one before, at least, not one that wasn't alive. It- well, enchanted her, really. Never before had she imagined that… that _this_ would be her life.

"Hungry?"

The woman asks, dark curls crowding over one eye as she looms over their food. There's this spark about her, bright and knowing and Emerald felt a heat creeping up her neck, spreading across her cheeks.

"N-No, Ma'am"

She chuckles, that woman. Lips tilted, bordering the edge of amusement.

" _Cinder._ "

She corrects. It's the third time she'd done so today, the fifth since they'd met, since she'd helped Emerald escape.

"Cinder,"

Emerald says, voice a whisper. She tastes the name on her tongue; exotic, _unique_. There is a different flavor for every letter, Emerald finds, drinking in the newness of it all. _Sweetness_ , like the tantalizing sweetness of melted chocolate, or caramel apples, or a slice of cake- anything and everything Emerald had ever let herself imagine. And she clings onto it, this sweetness, sups from it as a man thirsting in a desert.

She says the name again.

"Cinder."

With a tip of her head, Cinder acknowledges her.

"Yes."

* * *

The days following are the happiest Emerald had ever experienced. The woman- Cinder, _Cinder_ \- is a person of a kind she'd never had the fortune of meeting before. She was smart, wickedly smart. Cunning and slick and _powerful_ and Emerald just _marveled_ at the being that was her. Sweet but not saccharin, kind but not pitying. In the days following, Emerald found herself following after amber eyes, chasing after red-lipped smiles, smitten by the absolute euphoria of being there with _her._ She'd never been sentimental, Emerald doubted she'd ever be. For Cinder, however… for Cinder, Emerald found she could be _anything_.

"All you have to do is ask,"

She'd told her one night, under the glow of the shattered moon. Laying on her back, hair spread, fingers reaching for _hers_.

"Anything?"

The answer had been instantaneous, unhesitant, unrestrained.

" _Anything_."

There was a low laugh, a small spark of amusement. Emerald wondered then if she'd known- if Cinder had _known-_ Emerald would've moved mountains for her.

 _Just ask._

"Okay."

* * *

Things change quickly, however. Time flows, plans alter, the world goes on.

It was on a gray Monday, the last day of July, when Emerald met Mercury Black.

Bruised and battered and bleeding from his knees. She'd pitied him, then.

And then he'd spoken.

"Tell me, are you anything like your father?"

Saccharin. Salacious. Cinder's voice drops an octave, steeps in suggestion and warmth.

And Emeralds heart drops with it.

* * *

Flowers start to wilt with the coming fall. The air cools, the leaves darken. Cinders plans set to motion.

Mercury remains, lounges along the contours of Emeralds life as if he belonged there. Cinder had, of course, warned her, barred her from pushing him past the barriers that kept him _here_ and not anywhere else. She'd abided by her rules, if anything. She'd stuck to her every word, her every _order,_ tough though it was for her.

Deep within, however, beneath the lock and key of the box that kept her heart- Emerald grew envious. It was a darkness that entrenched her, spreading through her life-blood and leeching from it the very passion of her being. She still chased after amber orbs, she still got swept-up by Cinder's red-lipped smile, but within herself, within the one selfish part of her that never had a reason to be selfish before, she hated. She scorned and blanched and fired off at the walls of her being.

"Hey,"

Came a voice, deeper than hers or Cinders, uncaring and offensive and wrong and Emerald felt it then, as she always had. Jealousy and resentment. Hate like she'd never felt before.

"Leave me alone."

But he never did leave.

And Emerald, she hated that, too.

* * *

"Beacon?"

There's a fire, drowning out the darkness and coldness and noisiness of the forest. Around that fire, they sat, all three of them. Emerald closer to Cinder than she probably had any right to be, Mercury as far as he could get.

"Yes,"

Mercury tended to question anything and everything. If Emerald had learnt anything about the boy, it was that he was difficult like that. Always pushing the boundaries. Always testing the limits of leniency. He grated on her nerves. But Cinder….

"What could we possibly learn from that backwater?"

She humored him. Enjoyed his company. His brashness. His wit.

"Oh, we aren't going there to learn anything~"

Saccharin. Salacious. Suggestive.

Red lips tilt into a mockery of a smile.

She leans in.

"Ever heard of the _Vytal_ Festival?"

Emerald's blood runs cold. Mercury grins.

And through the flickering flames, red and orange and white at their ends, Cinder- Cinder looks positively _menacing_.

* * *

Emerald meets a girl.

Obnoxiously naïve, irritably excitable. _Sweet_.

It was a sweat like poison, a sweet that laved away at all Emerald's hard built walls and niggled through the guilt nestled far within.

This girl. This _kid._ They were targeting her Going to kill _her_?

The seed of doubt was planted. Cinder none-the-wiser, Mercury suspecting not at all.

A girl with silver eyes plays gardener, persistent, hopelessly optimistic. Emerald twitches and turns and tries to get away from her and her wiles.

It never quite works.

"Hi Emerald!"

She offers Emerald a chair at her table. Her sister winks, her partner frowns, her teammate turns a page of her book.

Emerald declines.

Attachments, that's where she draws the line.

"Maybe next time?"

Five weeks until the tournament begins.

One week until the dance.

"Maybe,"

She meets up with Cinder at their dorm room. The woman pulls up a slew of files.

"Here is our prerogative…"

In her presence, where things make the most sense, Emerald reaps and sears and throws out the everything that grew within her. Guilt, she'd long decided, had no place in this new life.

Cinder plots, Mercury lounges, Emerald listens raptly.

And when next Emerald sees her, days after their last encounter, she plasters on a smile and plays friend.

"Hey Ruby, mind if I join?"

Inside,

"Nah! S'okay!"

Emerald pictures what she'd look like,

"So, how was your day?"

When the truth was revealed.

"So, we had this quiz in Professor Peach's class and it was so harddddddd and I studied forever and I couldn't even remember anything anyways and- and- and…"

She tries not to feel guilty about it.

It never quite works.

* * *

Everything goes according to plan. The festival is ruined, the White Fang gets their moments glory; the hordes of Grimm come trampling in.

Students running. Huntsman fighting. People _dying_.

Standing atop a building, away from it all, Emerald wondered what it felt like.

Mercury films. Cinder beams. Their plans have come to fruition.

 _What was it like to fear?_

"The Goddess will be pleased,"

Cinder whispers, enraptured by the destruction below.

"Yes,"

Emerald agrees quietly, the horror of the moment a tattoo over her heart, one, she knew, which would never come off.

"Time for me to go,"

Emerald turns, watches Cinder leave. She never expected- could never have expected….

It was reaching midnight, the moon hung high, pieces scattered across the sky. There was a blare of something, somewhere. A screech, the resounding siren of the end of her world. Everything whitens.

And when next Emerald opens her eyes, Mercury is screaming, the Grimm had fled and Cinder….

Cinder was not there.

* * *

Under the dull gauze of depression, hate disperses into nothing at all.

Mercury pulls her from the brink, hauls her through the worst of it all and says not one word about it. He leaves when he can, stays when he can't. A constant in this world that is so vastly different.

Cinder's recovery is slow, threading through life's throes a staggering, maddening slump of paradoxes. Good days and bad days, days where she tries and days she tries not at all. It kills Emerald, truly. Wrings her dry from the inside out and asks her for patience, another day.

It was a bad day, today.

"Child."

Says Salem, making her rounds of the room Cinder kept for herself. A small thing, wholly inadequate for the person that was _her._ But- but Salem says she'd chosen it for herself.

"Keep her fed,"

And Emerald wonders.

"Yes, Ma'am"

Salem leaves, and the room is drenched once more in darkness.

* * *

"That's- that's it, that's okay,"

Cinder does not smile. Not anymore.

"You're doing great."

She can't speak.

"Just a little bit more."

For them, Emerald does both.

They were exercising now, four months after the incident. Small things, the simplest Cinder could manage.

Mercury stands far off to the side, quietness resounding louder than any word could. He's been like that, lately. Quiet.

Emerald tries not to think about it.

"Okay, Cinder,"

Cinders fingers tremble, curled as they were around the metal rails. Relearning how to walk had been their primary goal for close to a week now, and though improvement was slow, it was evident enough and that made Emerald happy. Even if only somewhat.

"Two more steps,"

Emerald tells her, words inching towards a whisper as she steps forward, arms spread- prepared to catch Cinder should she fall. She gets a glare for that, eyes a molten amber as she struggled to take another step.

 _Condescending_ , Cinder had called it yesterday.

 _Worry_ , Emerald would have replied, had she any right to.

"Almos-"

Her legs give out, and Emerald races to catch her.

"Are y-"

"'Agai-in, H'again"

Cinder trembles from where she is, practically collapsed over Emerald. She doesn't speak up again, doesn't bother to say a word more.

"Okay,"

Emerald tells her, slowly guiding her to the start of the rails. Cinder would tucker out soon, it had only been some time since they'd started physical therapy and Cinder still had a long way to go.

Emerald comes to a stop, helps Cinder balance as she places her hands back over the railings.

She pretends she doesn't see it, just as she'd done every other time before, the tears welling in her lone eye, sliding down her cheek, dripping from her chin.

She didn't need that realization. No, she didn't need it at all.

Emerald backs away from the woman.

Cinder, determined, starts the whole process all over again.

And Mercury, Mercury remains quiet.

"Doing good!"

Emerald cheers, smile in proper place. And she pretends, pretends, and _pretends_ that her heart still beat its happy little tone against her chest. That she heard it still, thumping out its tempo, trying to keep with her breathing and working and whatever it was she was saying or doing or feeling then.

The truth was, like Cinder's voice, Emeralds heart was lost to her.

* * *

Months pass, time flies by, and soon, Cinder does not need Emerald.

"Leave,"

Words a hiss, dripping with disdain. It does not hurt Emerald, at least, Emerald assures herself that it does not.

"I- But your arm-"

There's a sting, sharp and unforgiving. It takes Emerald a while to put together the pieces, to realize what had happened fully.

"Know. Your. Place."

Emerald places a finger on her cheek, thumbs away her tears before they could fall. She feels no pain, not as she would have before. No, she only feels a numbness. A purvey, creeping through from beneath her skin. A black hole, uncaring of her descent.

It's the first time Emerald truly remembers it, the numbness breaching through... and the madness that followed suite.

* * *

"When I was a kid, I wanted to be a Police Officer,"

It was rare, spending any of her time with Mercury Black. Mercury, well, he wasn't one to invest much- if any- effort in the goings-on of Emerald the sidekick and Cinder, villain extraordinaire. Surprisingly though, well, Emerald found herself liking this particular encounter.

There wasn't any fanfare. No cheers, no laughs, no jokes-in-between. It was somber, almost, a kind-of sadness where tears were not needed but were, somehow, always at their brink.

"When I was a kid, I wanted to be- to be a doctor, actually"

Her smile then was a little wet, her eyes a little red-rimmed. When she turned, heart a slow, palpitating thing, she was almost pleased by it, the fact that she wasn't truly alone in this. Because despite their many differences, despite the anger and petty rivalry shared previously between them... well, Mercury's eyes could get a little wet as well.

"I think we missed the mark a bit,"

Mercury tells her, nudging her side with the crook of his shoulder. To her own (and his) surprise, she lets out a laugh. Short, shrill, bordering hysterics, but a laugh, a true, definite laugh and it's the first she's had in months.

She doesn't thank him for this, not verbally at least.

But when he turns to her, lips upturned, smile not uncertain, she likes to think he understood.

* * *

And then... and then Haven. And then Haven, and they were fighting and they running and Cinder was dead.

Cinder was _dead._

And she could remember it all. She could remember it all perfectly. A battle that wasn't much of a battle, not until _she'd_ _gone._ A fight she was loosing, beaten, just being _beaten_. Words of warning, the cries for her own change of heart, her own redemption.

And that useless, mistaken, unfortunate hope.

She remembers that, too. Remembers it clearly, remembers it so, _so,_ clearly.

"...She won't let us down!"

The confidence.

The absolute _confidence._

"Emerald, get up, we have to go!"

And then- then she remembers nothing at all.

* * *

The darkness is a yawning trench, clawing at her, _after_ her, desperate to reach. It's a bit like madness, or maybe it really was? Emerald could never quite tell.

"She wouldn't want to see you like this,"

There are always flashes, always moments of clarity. Of green, most times. The green of dewy grass, droplets of water peppered along their backs, tips fanning against the surface of a slow trickling stream. The green of a wide forest seen from within a clearing, looming trees and spread branches, sunlight streaming in between the leaves.

"Why?"

Flashes of star studded skies, the serrated moon spread like chiseled lime. Flashes of the low hanging sun, red and orange and pink, dipping into a sea of the forestry.

"There you are,"

Flashes, sometimes, of steel-gray eyes.

"Hi,"

And a smile.

"Hi"

Sometimes, in a well of darkness, madness pulling, chasing after her... those flashes were enough.

* * *

They run from their destinies, the whatever-it-is Hazel had in-store for them.

Emerald, she does not regret it.

Days pass, coalescing into a repetitive cycle of eat, sleep, and walk forever. The early morning merges into the start of twilight; dusk and dawn become indistinguishable. They, gone from any ally, enemy or proper civilization, are forced to trudge on.

It's not extremely horrible, at least, not at the start. But as time goes by, Emerald begin to feel it again. The swell of unmistakable panic, desperation, _fear_. Her mind blinks, zones out of the present and back into the past, back into a world that was now so terribly different. Almost u _nrecognizable_.

Reality sifts for her, her mind meshing what was and what she _wished_ was into a grotesque, but strangely tantalizing _other._ In the days following, Emerald finds herself folding away from all that she wished had not been. Unconsciously abandoning their journey, Mercury and even herself for the simple _want_ to mingle in the presence of her own chimera.

"Emerald?"

Sleep comes too easy. Consciousness, she has to fight herself for.

Emerald finds herself longing after the make-belief of that which was not her life. Struggling against her own desire to _not be._ Not here, not now, not with things the way they were.

"Em,"

She wonders sometimes, when lucidity is well within her grasps: how does Mercury do it? He lives with it- _this_ , fights despite it all.

How does he do it?

The question is always at the forefront of her mind, always idle, slanted across her lips, drizzled over her tongue. But she looses focus so fast these days, she forgets so quickly.

In the end, she never does manage to ask.

* * *

 **"Meet me at the gates. We're leaving."**

 **-Merc**

* * *

It is her own lonesomeness which gives him away. He, with eyes shaded, shoulders hunched, back turned away. He who was not acting as he normally would- no, not at all.

It is a starless night, one of wafting clouds spread across the sky, blanketing even the shattered moon from all eyes that wish to seek it. Emerald is ill at ease, the hairs on the backs of her arms prickling, standing on edge as she followed along their long trail to somewhere. Mercury is quiet tonight, fingers clenched uncomfortably tight around the creasing ends of an old map.

 _Where are we going?_

The question bounces off every known crevice of her mind, jumbling in among the imbroglio of all her other thoughts. _What happened?_ Whispers a voice, quiet and shaking, tremors palpable. _How did it go?_ Whispers another voice, much louder then the last. _Rough_ , Emerald senses, her finger a simulacrum dancing along the outline of mind and memory.

"Why..."

She starts, words halting, slow. But Mercury does not turn, continuing on their path as if he had not heard her. _And perhaps he did not?_ Her mind supplied, trailing far ahead of them both, fingers like spindles as they reached far beyond her, dragging the rest of reality along. Halting. Slow.

Emerald begins to slip, the past a morass, a too-welcoming hole so easy to fall into. Mercury treads on, far ahead and far out of reach. It is perhaps the first time, the very _first_ time Emerald found herself unable to rely on him. Far worse then days before, when she'd journeyed on, running and hiding, his hands limp over her shoulders, himself a dead-weight over her back.

It was not the first time Emerald had fought against the darkness, the illogical cowardliness of her own consciousness, but- _but_ it was the first time she'd had more than a singular goal, the first time she'd had more than her own want to _be._

 _What's wrong?_

She thinks, clawing at mind and memory and sanity, determined for once since her life had ended. The forest and all its trees, the bushes, the grass, the moss, the _green,_ sinks into the very soil beneath her feet. Spreading like crystalline, determined to replace them, were purple gems and hard wood floors, slatted rocks, violet and red, and Emerald remembers this place all too well.

Emerald screams.

* * *

"Emerald."

When she comes to, the world is much darker, much cooler than it was supposed to be.

"You're late,"

It's the first thing she says- the only thing she could think to say. Mercury looked taken aback, gray eyes impossibly wide, mouth agape. A blanch. Emerald pushes herself up, tries to sit. There's nothing there to support her back. Weak arms tremble, her breath stutters in her throat, she's falling long before she realizes her arms have given out.

"Em!"

Mercury catches her. Mercury catches her but he does not look so happy about it. No, not at all.

"Just- just stay there. You're weak, we don't need you passing out on us"

He sounded annoyed, aggravated a bit. _Angry_ , though Emerald couldn't think of any possible reason for him to be.

"What's wrong?"

Emerald asks, a hand out, reaching for a stray lock of his hair.

He brushes her hand away.

"I'm fine,"

He says, and leaves it at that.

Emerald blinks.

And when the world comes back into focus, when her eyes have cleared and she could see now, more clearly, Mercury was heading out.

"Where are you going?"

"To scout."

He replies quickly. _Quietly_. His voice a near whisper, fingering the strains of wind brushing in from the west, blowing through the trees, over the grass and greenery.

"Why are you lying?"

Perhaps he hadn't heard her, for Mercury does not answer.

* * *

"Mercury?"

The sun is high, the morning bright, but the air remains cool, _biting_. Emerald and Mercury walk along a packed-dirt road some 12 miles west of Tsuki. It has been two days since they'd left. Two days and Mercury- Mercury seems to be withdrawn, unwilling to speak to her. It has been two days since they'd left Tsuki and Emerald is waiting still, for answers, or a reason, anything to explain the sudden cold.

"Hey,"

She calls again, tone light, voice not too loud. Amiable. Benign, if anything. Something Mercury would feel more open a reception to.

It does not work.

"What do you want?"

His words are sharp, blunt. Grating at something within Emerald, an aggravating thing that she, of all people, felt no remorse towards. Perhaps it was unbecoming of her, perhaps it was childish, but in response, Emerald found herself spitting out the words, tone the same as his. Irritable, vexed, and so very close to blowing.

"What is your problem?!"

He turns in a flurry, his shawl meters above the dirt, almost reaching the thin branches of the roadside shrubberies. His brows are crossed, drawn together by a frown that matched that of his lips. His nose flares, his cheeks redden. Mercury, for all he was worth, looked furious.

Somehow, this only angered Emerald further.

"What?"

He seethed, words rough, a horrible mimicry of calmness. Emerald grounds her teeth, eyes narrowed, lips pulled back into a sneer.

"You heard me. What. Is. Your. Problem?"

"I can't believe this."

Mercury mutters, dragging his fingers through the tangled nest that was his hair. The metal heel of his boot drags along the dirt in an effort to calm himself, and from this close to him, she could see him nibbling on the inside of his cheek as well. She recognized the habits, truly she did. Self calming mechanisms, borne of his own need to calm himself and his quick-fire temper.

Emerald wasn't at all hampered by this, however. Amicability? She'd thrown that out the window the moment he decided to snap.

"What's going on with you?"

She asks, frown a prominent downturn of her lips. Mercury glares at her.

"You don't get it."

He tells her, turning away the moment he'd finished saying his piece. Emerald'd own temper flared.

"Then make me!"

He keeps on walking instead, pretending for all the world that he hadn't heard her.

"Mercury!"

She growls, hands clenched, boot stomping a ways into the road.

"Mercury!"

But he keeps up his front, walking on as if she wasn't calling, as if whatever she had to say mattered not at all. And that- that more than anything else, is what truly cut at Emerald. Her anger, with the last syllable, slips away like sand between her fingers. Soon, all she could feel was weary, sad.

"Mercury?'

She called out one last time, walking forward, trying to catch up with him. He does not turn, however. He does not turn. And energy, motif, they'd always been such slippery concepts to Emerald. There one minute, gone the next.

"Merc?"

She asks, and she's close to tears, close to hysterics. The packed-dirt path becomes a quagmire, muddy ground too deep, too finicky for her sandalled feet to walk through. Emerald's cries become desperate, hysterical. He of all people should know, he of all people should _know_ how Emerald was. Her semblance didn't allow it, simply _couldn't_ allow for anger, or heartache or anything so close to stress.

"Mercury!"

She screams, frenzied and anguished, her aura near-sapped by this new onslaught of images.

Skies not so sunny. Trickling streams. A rabbit roasting over a campfire. Cinder. _Cinder!_

She tries to fight it, reaching after the fleeting reality with arms outstretched, clawing after actuality, craving, for once, what was and would forever be.

It doesn't quite work.

Anger leads Mercury forward with a resolve near unbreakable.

Scream as she might, he does not turn.

The last thing Emerald sees before reality is taken from her is Mercury walking so far ahead, hair barely visible, form near indistinguishable. The last think Emerald sees are her fears come true, being abandoned, screaming as she's swallowed by the ruddy ruins of the packed-dirt, the last of the morning sky swallowed by blackness.

* * *

 **Sooooo, hello again! Uhm, great to see you all... and update. _Yeah._**

 **So I know, I know, I'm pretty late on the update here. Truth be told, I've been busy. Schoolwork and all that, ya know that drill. I do hope this chapter isn't too bad though (I got this strange feeling that it might be but, oh well, ermmm). Hope this update was at least a momentary enjoyment and uhhh, see ya'll later!**

 **-Yorky**


	6. Basil

The woodlands of Anima were an easy enough passage if one knew the twists and turns, the old roads and shortcuts twining each town together. It just so happened that Hazel— having spent long years under Salem's order, and longer years still as a huntsman all his own— was well versed in this: travelling; through and fro, hitherto and beyond.

The grassland before him now was one he remembered well; one which had etched itself into the silken strands of his memory, well before it had been tainted by the ever-dark patches of despair. Green, the greenest, perhaps, in all of Anima, was a welcome sight compared to the overreaching forestry. Where dark spindle-like branches caved in, blocking out the skies and her beauty, here lay a vastness covered-up by nothing at all. The blue of the sky, tinted pink by the coming night, caressed the bare mounds shooting through the meadow far yonder. The sun blazed in all its glory, the yellow of its fire licking at the wispy clouds slinking along the edge of the horizon.

Truly, a beauty this all was to look upon.

And yet… for today, this was not his concern.

Hazel turns with a gruff sigh; lumbering on, shoulders drooping, feeling already the weight of the heavy pack straddled over his back. Four days of tireless journeying had worked through the remainder of his energy, sapped at his stamina with all the ferocity of the Nuckleeve itself. Here he was now, following still that which was once the great river Tsune, now a streamlet cutting through the hollow of the jutting hills.

Heavy footfalls, corralled by a heavier mind, weighed through dewy turf with a sureness ill-suited to the task. Within his own headspace, the halls which housed his many thoughts and the expanse (he'd discovered) of his own consciousness, Hazel chewed at the very idea of yesterday. Yesterday, where plans and promises were swept aside, hope but a single (defunct) benefactor in the tug-of-war brewing from— what was surely— a moments' witless judgement (and if the blood staining the walls, ceiling and floors were of any indication, temperamental, as well).

 _"Three dead,"_

He'd arrived but an hour late.

 _"One on the brink. Broken tailbone—"_

Hazel had to wonder, truly, what would have happened should he have hurried along just _that_ much more. Perhaps not so much, standard examination determined that the bodies had been left for, at least, two, perhaps three hours at a stretch. Perhaps… or perhaps, as Hazel himself had grown to suspect, the perpetrator had stayed a fair while more before leaving. An hour, forty— thirty minutes, minimum.

There were snags in the carpentry, you see, lines abraded into the mottled wood. The depression was light; a barely-visible indent (even to the naked eye), but it was there, whole and convicting and Hazel had felt his own hairs stand on end as he traced the familiar hoop of the outlined ring.

"Metal,"

He'd said, to nothing and nobody, as he trailed a finger along the floorboards. Mercury Black, as Hazel had come to know him, was a quick-fire lad, too ambitious, too _confident_ for his own good. If the little slip up was any indication… _what cause had he to be so aggravated?_

To that, Hazel could only guess. It could be nothing— Mercury wasn't exactly known for his social prowess— or, and Hazel had hoped for the ' _or',_ it was something else entirely.

Of course, he'd made use of the lone survivor, pitiful fool though he may be. He was an older man; one, perhaps, taken from the outskirts of Mistral's eastern shores (where the young had no use for, where the young had fled. Where the young had met their early deaths). The man was cooperative, if anything. Amenable, as all strays were bound to be (free spirits were a rancor sort of treat to the Goddess. Free spirits, free will, nothing and no one should have conscience over her).

"Do you remember anything?"

The man had wheezed, at first. Flecks of blood intermingling with his breath, splattering across the white sheets of his makeshift gurney. Hazel had, for a moment, been worried the man would not be able to answer him— but then he had replied.

 _"A-Another ma-ma-an. There h-had be-een 'nother man. Ta-alked, they talked."_

Hazel had not questioned how long Mercury had stayed, had not questioned still, if the man had noticed any girl with him. Because another man— no, there were no reports from those who were in league with Salem. No reports from the order, or any of their cronies. If another man had been here, if Mercury had conversed with another man here… _the depression in the floorboards, barely indents, all outlined by familiar rounded metal._

 _What cause had he to be so aggravated?_

It was a thought that flittered through his mind even now; forged from fears, abandoned hope— madness. For every known sign pointed southward, and the chill of the late summer air showed to all its own condemnation.

 _Dead or Alive?_ That, above all, was the question.

Hazel shuffles forward, leather boots scraping through the sod with flailing energy. The sun had not slowed its descent in all the time Hazel had spent scuffling through the conglomeration of his thoughts. Now, reddened and flaring, the sun bowled into the crest of the pinked hills, flaring off to all remnant the last rays of daylight. Hazel watches, drawing close to himself a moments worth of lethargy, as the sun dipped below the horizon. _Sunset_ , natures' formulated goodbye.

Hazel does not smile. Thin lips pursed and brows drawn together, he continues on his journey when the spectacle finally ends.

 _Dead or Alive?_

He had a lead, one, he knew, he couldn't put to waste.

 _"Have you seen him?"_

Hazel had called the boy his son, had held his tenure as father with the same long-headed determination as he had done everything else.

 _"Yes, yes, at the gates. He appeared to be heading east"_

The witless woman would be forgiven her crime, for she had, unknowingly, sentenced the boy to his own, long-winded demise. A mother, if Hazel was not mistaken, she held them— tender eyes, knowing and care-worn. _She would be forgiven…._

 _"Thank you,"_

Hastily said, served with a short, ungainly bow. She had smiled, bid her goodbyes. Hazel could remember her eyes, trailing after him as he'd left. Out the gates, headed east, east….

 _"They were following the river, Hangsang_ "

A streamlet trickling through the hillsides, a cut-off from the great river Man'nen— Hangsang— _Tsune._

 _"— headed east."_

Hazel soldiers on.

* * *

Nighttime comes swiftly enough, as was its wont in the eastern planes of Anima. Soon enough, the span of long-winded fields trickles into the beginnings of a low woodland, a coppice of willows and oak, intumescent boughs shading over the crooked footpath. Hazel was neither relieved nor agitated, trudging on, one foot afore the other in an attempt to simply get on with it.

He has walked now for hours. Hours without food, proper rest, a hunt for shelter. Endless hours spent whiling away his own energy chasing, of all things, a hint, a clue, the link between what was and what should be.

 _"_ _—headed east…"_

There was a trading town just up ahead, one which went by many names, depending on whom you asked. Deirdre, for those in the north. Keres, for those in the west. Sidero, for most in Mistral. For Hazel, however….

 _Fate, ill-fate intertwined._

 _Well met they are, senseless hope; burning desolation._

 _How fare you, sister mine?_

Hazel looks up, gazes at the stars. They shine brightly here. Here in the forestry, away from the chemical fragrance of urbanization, the blinding bright lights of modernity.

Sidero peers on from its sanctuary between the groves, the limpid circling of a creek (cut-off from the great river, fed as a child is fed by its waterways). And Hazel peers back, shoulders hunched, fighting still against the bedeviling fatigue. He could see them, almost, overarching tiled roofs, like pinions breaching through the obstructions of gravity, of nature and her laws, the brunt of her will. Cement houses, instead of brick. Rare wood carved into towering mockeries of the totem poles of the old centuries.

A sight to behold, truly.

 _And again, fate had led him here._

 _"They were following the river, Hangsang"_

But what is there to find, here in the East?

 _Death and destruction._

 _Where the young had no use for, where the young had fled. Where the young had met their early deaths._

There were no gates here in Sidero, no walls or fortifications to wall them off from the rest of the world (dark and reaching. The goddess and her spawns). Grimm were of no concern to them, the inhabitants here. The inhabitants here that were unfeeling most of all, vain and self-indulgent, uncaring of the many other than themselves. The inhabitants here who left at the dawn of fall, crowding over their wares, the spoils of their trade; searching for safe passage to the haven that was Mistral (for sell. _Just_ for sell).

 _The road ends here._

No one greets him as he enters. No one makes to look his way.

Though the streets are crowded, noisier than most these days… Hazel heard not at all, saw not at all; felt not at all.

 _Senseless hope; burning desolation._

To the east.

The eastern most part of here.

The edge of Mistral; that which teeters towards the shores, the last of green fields.

Hazel looks forth, and there a tower lays. A familiar thing, four stories tall: old, worn, and rickety. The remnants of what was once a citadel, the den of the religious, the once zealots of what is now nothing.

 _What was that can never again be._

It sits at the very center of the town, untouched and unlooked at. A burning reminder of what is now only known as _before._

Hazel moves onwards, moves _towards_ it. There is this knowing that slithers through his veins, clings to the strings clasped around his pipe-dream of _what can only be._ He is out of more answers, more clues. More time. This, this is the last town. The last town bordering the edge of nothing.

There is no lead, no other than here.

Half his scouts have been rid of, and the other half are a useless lot, they haven't the slightest clue (where to start? What to do?)

Salem keeps a close watch of deadlines and his is drawing near.

Hazel walks up rocks, the towns' saw-tooth caricature of steps. The Cherrywood door of the old tower is opened, for once, and Hazel feels it then, the leaping of his heart.

 _Endless hope…._

* * *

 _Tsuki haunts those whom she has received. A wraith clouding over judging eyes, the caress of deaths affinity. A darkness known yet unknown; that which binds men to sup from the cups of futility, knowing not of its poison._

* * *

 _The man stands with all the sureness of one who'd seen the very worst of the world. Red eyes hard and unyielding, chin raised, smirk a mere visor over the restless agitation kept within._

 _"Word spreads fast these days, kid"_

 _There is a hint of warning to his voice; the feather light amalgamation of bitterness and anger, swept over still by a crowding resignation. Mercury scrutinizes him, then, teeth worrying away at the skin of his lower lip in his own (rather pitiful) attempt to keep his silence._

 _Mercury's question from earlier resounds throughout the darkened room. A phantasm of the before, when adrenaline chased still, the movement of calves and hands, fingers and metallic bones._

 _"What do you want from me?"_

 _Now, with all that gone, Mercury was left with only a bone-deep fatigue. Deft hands clasped at the fraying ends of his brown shawl, drawing them shakily to himself. Whether to shield away the cold, or the piercing red eyes; Mercury couldn't quite tell._

 _Qrow Branwen, lost to his own seeming bout of melancholia, lets off a sigh that wafts through the air, reverberating with the might of a decades-long tiredness._

 _"I could've sworn you were the talkative one. I'm not usually wrong about these things..."_

 _He stands straighter, then, the tattered ends of his cape now lapping at the hem of his worn pants. There was a furrow to his brows, pulling at the wrinkles that stretched beyond his eyes and above his forehead. His nose scrunched (and Mercury swore under his breath at the familiar expression), pulling thinned lips into a long frown._

 _"Honestly. You're making my job here difficult"_

 _"What job?"_

 _Mercury snaps, now wound too tightly to care about the sacrilege of his own hastily sworn oath. There's this glimmer he gets in response, a biting flash of ruddy eyes, distinct and familiar. Amusement._

 _"Oh, so you don't have a tracker on your tongue, hmm? That's good to hear."_

 _Mercury glowers. If possible, Qrow's amusement grows even more._

 _"I mean, I was getting worried. You kids get into all sorts of trouble and who knows? With the people ya got hounding after ya, anything is possible."_

 _Mercury growls and it's a guttural thing, spreading through his throat and bottoming out his belly. Qrow looked surprised, if nothing else, and the pleasure Mercury got from this was enough to tide him through the remainder of all he had left to say._

 _"Why?"_

 _Qrow hums his response; eyes him with something approaching contemplation._

 _And when he next speaks, several minutes having passed, he sounds more sobered, more the huntsman he'd presented himself to be._

 _"I never wanted to come here, if that means anything to you. My superior, however… Mercury,"_

 _But then his tone takes this lilt, dips into the blood-soaked floors and pulls from them its own gruesome load._

 _"You hold something with you, Mercury. A power, a key, something Salem needs desperately."_

 _Mercury is already scrambling away when his mind finally comes to, when his mind finally strings together one and two. He drops to the floor like a released anchor, pulling with him the entirety of his being. There's this sick feeling deep within him, a dawning horror that burbled through from the very depths of his heart. His breaths shorten out, quicken into useless pants. His hands grapple at the stones beside him, the rough, jagged things protruding from the floorboards—the result of an explosion from the nearby wall._

 _He tries to distract himself, lets his eyes wander about the room. His hands grapple further, flail about in an effort to find something to ground himself. A rock, the floorboards, the floorboards, a shoe! A shoe, and blood, and clothes and a corpse, and Mercury is dragging his hands back to himself, curling his fingers protectively over his chest._

 _"N-No."_

 _He's failing, he's failing, **his** failing. _

_Qrow stands before him now, frown deep, marring his skin with a familiar bitterness that shot right through to Mercury, made ache something within him. His lungs pulled, tight with exhaustion as his heart struggled to level out his heartbeats._

 _"I see."_

 _Qrow bends, settling himself on his knees. His eyes level with Mercury's own, red on gray, staring at gray. Scrutinizing gray._

 _A pause._

 _"Why did you run away?"_

* * *

 _And silence rings most of all…._

* * *

"I waited."

Moonlight slinks in through the towers high windows, brushes along the surface of the dusted marble flooring. The destruction here is a familiar sight, and once upon a time, it would have been all he'd been purvey to. Now, however… Hazel's eyes flicker upwards, catch those of the person wreathed beneath the tenebrous of the night's maw.

 _Gray_.

Gray, gray eyes.

"Mercury."

* * *

 **So, funny story, this chapter was supposed to be in Mercury's PoV. Mostly.**

 **Ehehe, lets just say that Hazel popped up, my mind said "lets try that for a sec" and a few hours later I had like, 2k words of Hazel angst.**

 **Uhhhhhhhh, sorry? (Early updates have high prices, my story managing skills being one of em. Eh. More Merc next chapter tho, guaranteed!)**

 **For now, however**

 **Ciao!**

 **-Yorky**


	7. Lavender

**A/N: This chapter continues directly after Chapter 6. Don't like it? Uhhhhh, I'm sorry?**

* * *

A day later and he is nonplussed.

Perhaps, he should have expected this.

Betrayal, as they say, is a strong word. Sears the flesh than reaps it off, one after the other. Filleting, then mincing, and you could feel every new wound, though the flesh has long been torn from you. Like being stamped on, cut through; burnt to nothing. Mercury knew. Oh, how Mercury knew.

And Cinder, she had a way with words, you see. Terrifying, with incongruous, one-worded replies. Slick smiles and eyes just a little wide.

Mercury had seen it all, time and again.

Betrayal hurt. Flayed skin from muscle, and stripped muscle from bone. Reaped and tore until flesh was raw, until flesh was _wrong._

But betrayal was so, _so_ common.

Like sand in a dessert, or water in an open sea. Like clouds on a windy day, the rain that always came pouring after.

It happened so often, happened so, _so_ often.

 _With cunning eyes, wicked smiles._

It hadn't hurt, walking away.

Hearing her wail after him, nails scraping through the hard-packed dirt, raking through hair and grass, screaming and screaming and _screaming_ his name….

It hadn't hurt.

 _It hadn't._

Mercury felt numb.

It was a cold sort of numbness. Seeping into his veins, dripping black-violet, intermingling with the red of blood already there. He felt nothing as he trudged on, metal legs dragging him through the dirt road still.

The forest spread out far beyond his right now, a pinewood that climbed the slope of the mountain like a stairwell. To his left, pine trees that hung over him, shading the road from the otherwise harsh light of the midmorning sun. They crawled up the mountainside, the tips of their boughs fanned in a seeming attempt to reach for the stars.

Oh, but Mercury paid all this little mind.

Long fingers kneaded a fistful of his shawl, coarse and filthy though the fabric was. Gray eyes searched for the horizon, you see, piercing through wispy clouds and the brightness of daylight. He sought the end of the road, for once, numbness spreading fast through his limbs.

Betrayal, it did hurt.

But not him. _Never_ him.

Mercury felt cold.

A cold that reached deep within, trailing over his skin with sharp, claw-like hands; frostbite, winters edge.

It hadn't hurt him, betrayal. After all, those hurt were the betrayed not the betrayers. And anyway, he had done it for her own good. To man her up, give her a spine she could work with, a mind that could function, a mind she could _use_.

Not that shell.

 _Not she who once was and could never again be._

 _Not she who clawed at her own hands, and screamed her voice raw._

 _Not she who prayed to the heavens, sung deaths song._

 _Not her._

 _Not **this** Emerald. _

He remembered before, when they'd first met. She'd glared at him, challenged him.

She'd hated him, then.

 _"You think you've got it easy now?"_

There was a smirk, a little, incorrigible thing. Sliding far up one side of her lips, stretched until it was just reaching for her ear.

Mercury had been weary, then.

 _"Step out of line, even a little bit. Do anything to make me think I can't trust you? I'll skewer you."_

She'd raised her sickles, trailed the edge of her blade along the skin of his neck. So close, so _ready_ to draw blood. Cinder had warned her though, he knew; she'd never actually dare.

But for one moment, for one tiny, tiny moment….

There was a sheen to her blade, the sort only seen on a weapon so thoroughly cared for. Mercury had seen the reflection of his eyes lower as she pressed the very tip against the base of his throat, palms steady and unyielding against his aura, a flaring and wild gray-white.

He'd smiled, then.

Smiled, even as his heart sped impossibly. His fingers twitching, reaching for the mechanical switch between the bottom of his metal knee and calf, the one which would remove the cover from his hand-made guns.

She'd smile back, sick and twisted.

Confident.

So very different.

Mercury missed that girl, _that_ Emerald.

She hated him, yeah, and he'd hated her. But he trusted her, at least. He trusted her to have his back, trusted her to take care of herself. Trusted her to be alive and safe, to be able to escape.

The world was so much different now, so much harsher.

She could die, he knew. The way she was now, she could die so easily.

Mercury tried not to think of the ache it caused, just the thought of it. He tried not to think, not to feel anything other than the deep settling numbness already permeating his everything.

He didn't need _that_ , not now.

But yesterday, just yesterday, he'd met a man he'd thought he'd never again see. And that man, he knew everything.

Every. Single. Thing.

What more, if he'd been as eager for blood as Mercury had been? What more if he wanted him, and Emerald and every single one of their not-allies captured and killed?

Information, as it'd turned out, wasn't as tightly guarded as Mercury had always trusted it to be.

Emerald… and Emerald wasn't in much of a mindscape to keep all their little lies tight-wrapped and stored away.

What more if that man— Qrow, had been after them, out for blood, the taste of revenge?

He'd have it all.

He'd have it _all_.

And Mercury couldn't have helped.

And Emerald, she was useless. So utterly useless.

To help him, to defend _herself_.

 _"Because I can't handle it— this! Stress, so much stress, and my semblance keeps fluctuating. I don't know what I see… I can't— **can't**!" _

He remembers the way she called after him. Voice loud and lost and so, utterly raw. The way it'd waned, tiptoed off the edge and into oblivion long before he was away from hearing range.

He'd heard as she'd tapered off. He'd heard as she slipped away.

His chest ached.

Like a sword had been driven through it and taken out, leaving him no time to react to anything but the pain.

The numbness spread farther, faster as the sun moved east across the sky.

It was midday when he could finally see the shoreline.

Midday when he'd registered, finally, that his legs have buckled and his hands were shaking.

Midday when he'd realized that, perhaps, he'd made a mistake.

* * *

 _For our future, we reach forward and grasp with limpid fingers and watch as, like sand, it all slips away._

* * *

Night comes, and it is far too soon.

The serrated moon sits on the far edge of the sky, pieces scattered across the skyline like diamond flakes suspended, left stranded against a black canvas. There are no stars tonight, it seems. Remnants satellite, Mercury would think, was a connoisseur of all things pragmatic, and perhaps, knew in its heart of hearts that Mercury rather preferred this to the distraction of little crystallites embedded over the heavens above.

"Well,"

And Mercury did know that sooner or later he'd have to rest. He did know this. But it was bright out tonight, bright enough, at least, for Mercury to still be able to retract his footsteps, follow the planes of which he'd already been; make his way back to where he once was and where Emerald could possibly be. He couldn't waste this time, not if he was to find Emerald before anything truly horrible happened.

Tsune trickles on beside him, its whispering a constant companion in Mercury's journey to _somewhere_. Emerald couldn't have gone far, he knew, and if she were to be logical about her… situation, she would have followed the river still. Harder for her enemies to find, easier to obtain food and water— easier for Mercury to re-stumble across her.

There was a twinge in his chest, this time old and worn and so very familiar.

He tried not to console it as guilt.

There was a glade, one not so far from here. It was nearest to the open road— a gateway, really— to Navivač, he thinks the name was. Something after an old tale from the Northeastern Sierra, if Cinder's campfire stories were anything to go by. A man running away from his anything and everything, plagued as he was by poverty, by death. His parents had both died, and so had his sisters. He'd been running away from his own hometown and its villagers after he'd been accused of witchcraft— a fanatic story, truly.

Mercury wondered after it though, frown pulling at his lips as he made his way across the increasingly rough terrain leading up to the said glade. Stories like those, they were wild and, oftentimes, plain nonsense. This one in particular though, it tug at something within him, something like _irony_. Mercury knew, of course, that neither he nor Emerald were running, not at the moment… but they'd been only nearly avoiding the road all the while, only nearly succeeding.

Un-superstitious as Mercury was, he wondered what that'd meant for them.

 _"Did he survive?"_

 _The flames flickered all the while, crackling and burning as Cinder sat before them, fingers placed delicately before her. She wore a little smile, something cold and discomforting. Mercury knew the answer then, long before she could say it._

 _"Well, the villagers were rather adamant. Too much for a man like him,"_

 _Emerald leaned forward, enraptured. If he hadn't been sitting, if only he hadn't been sitting… Mercury would've taken a step back; turned away._

 _The flames flickered on, then, like a tidal wave, a storm from seemingly nowhere, the campfire lurched. It surged through the stagnant night breeze, lightening their camp until it was bright as daylight. Cinder, she was standing, somehow, her fingers twirling, casually manipulating the reddened flames._

 _"I could show you the place where they killed him, a little chapel just a day's walk from here. Legend has it, there's a black ring somewhere near the front of the entryway, faint, but clearly there."_

 _The campfire dwindled, restlessly settled against the burnt ends of the firewood._

 _"They say, when the villagers were done, there was not a trace left of him, just the flames."_

 _Cinder seated, finally, leaning back against the trunk of a twisted elm tree. She smiled still, her eyes a fire all their own, scorching and bright as they trailed around the camp._

 _And all was silent._

 _"Let this be a lesson."_

* * *

 _It is hard, so very hard. I wish I could keep what I had been given…._

* * *

Navivač is overlarge and, somehow, far too small all the same. The road is as smooth as is possible out here, the better for the old trucks and carriages that make their way from village to village, but it's nothing like those in the city and, perhaps this is why Mercury feels so uncomfortable. He charges on, though. One foot after the other, one grueling step at the time.

It is nearing dawn, he can almost make out the strips of sunlight shooting through the darkness far west, through the foliage. Normally, he would be relieved by this. Sunlight meant more brightness, more light to move about things (because even if he'd gotten use to the darkness, he would always, always crave the light and the sun, what felt familiar, like home). But it only filled him with dread, a slow-pooling draught that ate at the numbness, replacing it. Replacing….

Mercury took in a breath, took in a long breath in an effort to keep calm. He knew it wouldn't do to worry so much over Emerald, he knew that she was perhaps just some time away, that she couldn't have gotten far.

He _was_ starting to recognize the road, right?

He _was_ starting to realize where exactly it was he needed to go.

But still dread pooled, and still his sanity was tested. He couldn't not worry, not with Qrow's words filling his head. _He_ knew, people _knew_ about Emerald, the power's she'd obtained. Mercury knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wasn't the only person searching for her. That thanks to his own foolish hopes, and needs to escape, he'd put her in danger and he needed to find her; get her out of there.

 _"You hold something with you, Mercury. A power, a key, something Salem needs desperately."_

There had only been so much he could say to that. Only so much without outright lying… and he'd been tired of that. Tired of lying.

 _"Why did you run away?"_

He saw something in the distance. Something on the ground, not grass or torn paper or anything he'd expect to see on a road like this.

He rushes forward, barely feels anything as his knees crash against the hard pack dirt, skidding and uprooting the little tuffs of grass sticking out. He doesn't expect what he sees, doesn't expect it at all.

His throat tightens, and his stomach drops. He resists it then, as always he'd had, the urge to vomit. To turn away. The urge to _run_ , to **_never_** look back.

 _He knew he was on the right track, he'd always known…._

He really should've known, confirmation doesn't make any things easier.

Because it was Emerald's satchel he'd found. Torn and dirtied but so clearly hers. There were even strands of hair, long green strands of Emerald's hair just scattered over the sling, the clasp, the road beside it.

He knew he was on the right track, he _knew_ ….

And yet he found himself settling down, right there by the road. Fingers tracing the worn brown clasp, the zigzag of the stitching and the little magnetic button-thing that kept it closed.

And he found himself thinking all over again, how stupid he was to have ever left her.

Because anger, it came so easy to him. Came so, _so_ easy.

And when it left….

It was not the first time Mercury had realized this, and likely, it wouldn't be the last, but he found that truly, regret left such a bitter taste in his mouth.

Mercury doesn't know how long he'd sat there, stayed very nearly slumped against the road itself. But the sun wasn't so high when he'd stood back up. The sun wasn't so high when he'd let his hand curl around the strap of the satchel, when he'd slung it over his own shoulder, added it to the weight of his own baggage.

The sun wasn't so high up when, finally, he'd continued on his journey with shaking legs. _Hoping_.

Just hoping.

* * *

 _It is assumption itself which causes all our downfalls._

* * *

"Where's the girl?"

Night embraces so easily those who hide in the shadows.

To Hazel's words, Mercury smiles.

"I don't know."

* * *

 **A/N: I am SO sorry this is late! I swear to Oum above, I hadn't meant to take so much time, but with school being how it is, with exams and Projects, Camellia just had to be put aside for a while. I will TRY to update more ardently, however! This I swear! (Thor AU's are getting to me, uhhh)**

 **Til next time!**

 **Ciao!**

 **-Ce**


	8. Hyssop

Navivač, as all roads, has an end.

It is night once more when he reaches it. Night, and fatigue calls as it is bound to, chittering and whispering, tugging at the hem of his cloak, and the weight of his travel-bag. Tugging at metal legs and shaking hands, wanting, simply _wanting_ for him to rest.

Yet he cannot.

 _Will not._

 _Where, where, where…._

It is a whisper of words, a song unlike any he's ever heard. Deep and rumbling, reaching with claw-like hands for the straying strands of his own trepidation. It is a want, a _need_. A slow building anxiety bubbling from beneath the surface of his many closed thoughts, eager— so incredibly eager— for answers.

 _Where, where, where…._

He walks now beneath the shadowed boughs of a caliginous forest. Pine trees tall and towering, spurs like spindly arms reaching for a sky barely seen. And it is tenebrous, veiled in Cimmerian cloth so steeped in _dark_ and _silence_ that the very space beyond him seems as lost to the abyss as his thoughts are. Dark and menacing, and his heart races through the wanton cries of fatigue, craving from him a hold not so battered in adrenaline.

 _Where, where, where…._

Whispers the voice inside his head, watching and _watching_ and hoping beyond all hope that _forward_ held more than just darkness compressing.

"Emerald?"

He tries. The word is hoarse, trembling as it slips past his lips. He tries for another, and the word does not catch, splintering and vanishing; unheard to all but him.

He is not surprised. So very _not_ surprised.

 _Emerald?_

He asks again, in silence.

And moonlight slinks in then, from the cuts between long branches, the friable ends of yellowed leaves. The serrated moon scratches through wispy, darkening rain-clouds, shattered pieces like glittering shards of ivory pasted onto a board of the heavens— the world.

He would take this all as a sign, he _would_ … but he is so very tired, so used to being disappointed, being _alone_.

When moonlight flickers— when moonlight flickers and disappears once more, he is not surprised.

No, not at all.

"Emerald…"

It is not a call. Rather, it is a whisper. The word hangs clumsily enough, with syllables misshapen and barely, _barely_ understandable. Tiredness calls, as tiredness is wont and the darkness is an expanding abyss, growing and growing, forever not-wanting to recede.

And for all the life in him, Mercury cannot grasp it— this. The concept that as far off as Emerald was, as gone to him as she could possibly be, he was following her all too avidly. Like a shadow on a summer day, long and dark and ever-there. Like a barter watching from afar, the slow-dripping poison circling the rim of his cup; drinking from it anyway when all is said and done, for a chance, merely the chance to know what could— what _will_ happen afterwards.

"E-Em…"

There are shadows now, of more than just trees and branches and leaves far too high. Shadows of people and places. Of Atlesian scarfs wrapped round slender necks to keep off the cool of mid-winter. Of dewy green grass, endless pastures upon endless fields in the Midwestern planes of Anima. Of people, crowding and not, running through buildings towering, and fighting and laughing and smiling and Mercury could almost remember. Mercury could almost, almost truly remember.

Of a woman, teeth glinting, eyes glimmering, sharp. Wanting, _always_ _wanting_.

"Mercury,"

It whispers, voice as all those of shadows. Thin wisps of air trace along the curve of his jaw; brush through stray, frayed strands of hair in a mockery of _warmth_ and _soothing_. And there is a smile, small, so painfully small and indulgent.

And Mercury knows her.

Mercury knows this woman….

"She always said I had potential,"

They are quiet almost, those words. Low and quiet yet sweeping all the same. They come from nowhere at all in this not-road, this world of shadows and dark and tiredness. Nowhere at all, and yet, _everywhere_ all the same.

"W-Who?"

Is all Mercury manages to say; for words and letters, for _speaking_ , seem to come to him now as naturally as cats through water, as fish dancing on dry sand.

And that shadow of a not-woman, she from his memories yet not from his memories at all, smiles. It is a wider smile, something all too real and un-fabricated, all too congenital for one such as her.

"You look scared,"

There is a chuckle, equally as quiet as it is loud, and Mercury could almost make it out— the disappointment hanging onto it by bare threads. He shifts his stance, levels his shoulders and his gaze and his breath and he pretends as always he's had to, that he was okay and fine and he could handle this, _always_.

"So?"

The shadow, that not-woman laughs. It is a hollow laugh, one of open mouths and no-sound save the deepening wells of darkness congealing, shifting and transforming, becoming something that is yet too much like _nothing_ , try though it may _not_ to remain the same.

"I always knew you were a horrible actor,"

The woman says, and her voice is very familiar. Brittle though it was. Brittle and strained and soaked though it was in that same not-there disappointment.

"Do I know you?"

Mercury asks, finally. The words shake— try as he might to steady them— but his voice is clear enough and he knows, somehow just _knows_ that the shadow, that _not-woman_ , whoever she was understood.

"Mercury…"

The words come not from the not-woman, they come not from the darkness descending or the shadows dancing along the edges of his vision. Instead… _instead_ they come from a tree. A tall tree, a _pine_ , like all others here. One that reached skyward with wiry branches and reddened leaves.

Slowly, so very slowly, Mercury allows his eyes to roam upwards, to climb towards the steeple of branch, of tree reaching for the heavens as no other tree has come close to doing.

"Emerald."

There are eyes, red, red eyes looking down upon him. Red eyes clear and bright and not at all confused, not at all bewildered by the sight of him.

"I waited."

Is her greeting. Sharp and such a blinding, bright white. He can't help it then, what he says afterwards. All he knows is that the world, for even a second of his time, had gotten so much better than he'd ever expected it could be.

"I'm glad"

* * *

 _Let us not tarry, the world awaits!_

* * *

 _"Come with me,"_

 _There is rain; the crash and crackle of thunder over shoddily built roofs. Like a rushing soldiers march, heavy-footed steps digging through dirt and muck, pummeling soil and long-worn putrescent grass._

 _"You sound serious, Branwen."_

 _Branwen— Qrow Branwen who stands at the very end of the room. Back facing him, fingers uncurled and bared, rested though they are behind his back. His cloak flutters, tattered ends flickering in time with the wind coiling through the jagged shards lining shattered glass windows, and— and he would look cool, Mercury admits, if not for the fact that he looked far too much like a standing cock as he was now._

 _Now, now of all times…._

 _Lightning flashes in the distance, beyond parted diaphanous curtains and sharked windows broken beyond use. A dance of light and electricity, dangerous,_ deadly _; playing its game of splitting skies and hurling cries, waiting, simply waiting…._

 _Biding its time..._

 _Thunder booms. The flash, bright as daylight, piercing through the darkness curling over blackened, dead bodies and drying,_ dried _blood. Piercing through the place in which Mercury hides and is simply_ fine _, and Qrow, standing beyond him, red eyes up and out and watching as the world settles back into perceived normality._

 _"I am."_

 _Serious, he does not say._

 _Does not need to say._

 _The sky lurches, and the rain pours all the harder. Crashing, like the rough slam of rogue waves on a garden of rocks, in high tide, under moonlight, a cliff with a drop that goes on forever…._

 _And Mercury is falling,_ falling _, confused and angered and angered and confused._

 _His fingers curl into not-quite-fists, and his shawl is the only thing keeping untrimmed nails from piercing into unprotected skin._

 _"I won't."_

 _And his voice, coarse as the fabric between red-stained fingers, is calm— entirely_ too _calm to be his._

 _There is no immediate response. No words to fill this void that is silence, this silence that is a void. None. None at all save the wailings of the grieving sky, thunderclaps like low-grumbles, the newly frayed ends of heavens cries._

* * *

 _The world awaits…_

* * *

"What did you do?"

When Mercury tips his head, his bangs very nearly cover the whole of his face, obscuring his expression, keeping it from view. Hazel grits his teeth, forces himself to calm even as Mercury wastes his time, circling the blackened walls of the old citadel, fingers stretched, grazing the brittle rock.

"You'll need to be more specific,"

He says, drawls, turning over the words in his mouth, as if he were chasing after the flavor of his own condescension rather than the response he would receive. Hazel, however, had dealt with men more ballsy than he would ever be. Stoic, voice ever grim, he replies, failing to rise to the bait.

"Where is Emerald?"

Mercury pauses in his musings, the metal heel of his boot scraping tirelessly against the tiled flooring. When he turns, that is to say, when finally he spares Hazel a glance, he flashes him a too-wide smile, eyes over-bright. Manic.

"Didn't I already tell you, Hazel?"

The older man steps forward, hands clenching and unclenching, shaking for the life of them as he struggled to reign in his temper.

 _"Where?!"_

And when Mercury looks up, he levels their gaze unflinchingly.

"I. Don't. Know."

It is a terrible, _terrible_ answer.

"Don't play games with me, _boy_ "

Because as Hazel's eyes adjust, the darkness seems just a little less visible. Oppressing. _Cold_. And he sees him, sees Mercury….

Sees how, noticeably enough, Mercury shrugs.

"That's kinda hypocritical, isn't it?"

Perhaps Hazel would have felt better if it had been so, if Mercury had looked far less put together, far more erratic than he did then. As it was, he never quite got what he expected.

When Mercury smiles, it isn't the arrogant, ignorant thing he'd have thought it to be.

"What did you do to her?"

It is self-deprecating. Barbed, almost dagger-like in the way it pierces through the very darkness threatening to entrench them in their entirety.

Hazel, he feels weary.

"You see, that's the thing…"

Because anger, it had always been something Hazel struggled to maintain. To keep sealed.

Terrible really, _truly_ , for, without further prompting, well….

Hazel lunges at him.

* * *

 _I see, as you see— reality._

* * *

He sleeps.

Sleeps for he has been asked to, allowed to.

Emerald, she is insistent, says not one word against it.

Mercury, he is glad….

* * *

 _Actuality…_

* * *

 _The rain patters off, and the storm, sudden as it comes is as suddenly gone._

 _Qrow Branwen, huntsman extraordinaire, spymaster and messenger of Ozpin… he does not fight him, Mercury. Not— not as Mercury had expected him to, if anything. He takes Mercury's apprehension, his answers in stride._

 _"I'm not asking you to jump off a cliff for me. I can see it clearly enough, and I don't blame you for not trusting me."_

 _His eyes are red, such a deep,_ dark _red. Red, like frozen jewels, rubies harvested for sell. Red, like lava molten and burning, temperature still rising, **rising** , erratic. Red, like blood stained floors, and red-lipped smiles, the tip of Emerald's blades; his metal heels. Red, red, such a deep, permeating red. Rending skin from flesh and flesh from bones. Twisting and tearing, reaping in all and sundry. _

_And Mercury stands…_

 _Mercury faces this red._

 _"Why?"_

 _He asks, for it is all he can ask the man. And he— the man, Qrow— smiles. Wide and bright and bitter all the same. Wide, bright, bitter and angry not at all._

 _Not. At. All._

 _"I tried to kill your boss, for one—"_

 _But Mercury shakes his head._

 _Shakes his head, and removes from himself a repetition of the obvious._

 _"You know that's not what I meant."_

 _Qrow's lips lace themselves into a bright— too-bright grin._

 _"Sure I do, sure."_

 _The rain has stopped, has pattered off._

 _As sudden as it had come, it is just as suddenly gone._

 _Gone._

 _Nothing keeps him here now, Qrow. Nothing but the blood seeping through leather dress-shoes and the hem of long black pants. Nothing but Mercury, crouched and always-staring, watching and wondering when next deaths possibility would deign to greet him. When next he would wonder, was left to wonder, if this is where he died._

 _"If you need me for anything,"_

 _And Qrow is crouching low, knees tucked beneath his chin, long arms outstretched. One to support himself, another reaching. Reaching…._

 _"I'll be here, in Mistral for another week or so."_

 _And theirs is a paper in his hand. Tattered and browning at its edges, one single, simple number written on the back with black ink._

 _"What-"_

 _Yet, and yet Qrow silences him with a huff. Low and bright and bright and low. Low, like rumbling thunder, bright like lightning scorching through the sky._

 _"Try not to die."_

 _There is laughter, voracious yet quiet all the same._

 _Mercury slowly, so very slowly looks up from the browning, crumpled, miserable excuse for good paper. Looks up, so very slowly up at the older huntsman with kind, laughing eyes, narrowed and crinkled and seemingly content._

 _"Yeah, I'll do that."_

 _It is not quite a lie, but Qrow smiles anyway._

 _Nods._

 _"Mercury Black."_

 _He's gone in a flurry of black, feathered wings and the acrid, ever familiar taste of old-magic._

 _Mercury finds that he is not surprised, not truly._

 _It was only fair…._

 _"Branwen."_

 _He whispers out the goodbye to nothing and no one, taking out the scroll tucked carelessly into the back pocket of his pants._

 _And the world, the quiet, sullen world, slowly goes back to as it once was._

 ** _"Meet me at the gates, we're leaving."_**

 ** _-Merc_**

* * *

 _How things are, ever will they change; never can they be._

* * *

He's awake at the first sign of morning.

Birds chirp along to rustling leaves, the bustling of the wind through the forestry. Silence is a calm specter, palliating in its presence. Weaving on, never growing; never leaving.

There is no voice to greet him.

 _"Emerald?"_

* * *

 _Do you see this, reality?_

* * *

 _ **Super late, I know (and it's even halved, holy hell). Truth be told, its been a hectic past two weeks and with, well, midterms coming up next week, I'd be hardpressed to find my Goldilocks zone between studying, passing my requirements and well, my life basically. I do hope this does not disappoint, however, and I will try to update the final, definite FINAL chapter by next week.**_

 _ **Til then,**_

 _ **Ciao!**_

 _ **-Yorky**_


	9. Daffodil

The air is sizzling, antsy on the balls of its own feet. The world beyond the fast-running bullet train is a blur of mismatched colors. Spotted red and fading blue, clashing harshly with the pelting white of an oncoming snowstorm.

"Ease up on the expression there,"

He looks down on her kindly enough. Beaded red eyes focused, scrutinizing if not for the drunken haze that always seems to surround him.

A sigh.

"Ya know,"

He grumbles, slumping into the seat beside her, legs spread and hands cramped against the wall from where he let them hang over the backrest. He wears a roguish sort of smile, something probably charming for the ladies he likes to keep around. She remains unamused.

"I expected,"

He huffs, following after the roll of her eyes in what she'd only assume to be amusement. Always amusement.

"—you to be difficult. Didn't expect ya to be mute as well,"

She glowers, a dark thing that he waves off, laughing breezily. As if he didn't care.

He probably didn't.

"I can talk."

She grounds, the words catching on her tongue even as she speaks them. They're heavy, if words had any physical weight. Towing her tongue down like ten-ton bricks, or an anchor in the deep sea.

"And do you have a name, oh well-spoken one?"

There's a flash of teeth in his smile. Something biting, almost mocking in the tilt of his lips. Or perhaps she was simply biased, angered and driven as she was by the past. It didn't matter anyways, not when she turned her head away.

She didn't need to look at him for this, didn't need to talk if she didn't want to.

Beyond the tempered glass, the scenery mixes more than it had before. A conglomeration of deep browns and blacks, yellows and reds.

For whatever reason, she finds that beautiful.

They sit in silence for a while, neither of them saying a word.

There's commotion in the room beyond theirs, some thumping and laughing, squeaky voices loud enough to merge in with the constant of the train's engine. Somewhere, compartmentalized in the forest of her mind, she recognizes them well enough.

"Hey!"

Perhaps she'd been staring too long, perhaps she was simply obvious; either way he'd taken notice of her.

"You know, you could go talk to 'em"

There's a pause then, something thick filling the space between them. He's not as sprawled out as he had been before, his hands crossed over the table, feet touching and head bowed. For once, he's not looking at her when he speaks.

"I know it's hard, trusting us… me"

He sighs when he speaks, words grumbling and low, as if he wants no one else to hear.

"It is."

Because she'd never been a liar, and from the look on his face, he expected as much.

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry things ended up this way for you."

And he did look ashamed, brows scrunched and lips pursed thin. For the first time since she'd gotten on this thrice-damned train, she felt guilty. Just a bit.

Of being difficult, of being annoyingly stubborn. Borderline foolish.

"It was for the best,"

And it's not quite an apology, but the words come easy to her, and that's a start.

"Alright, alright then."


End file.
